US Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday after intense scrutiny over the agency’s failure to prevent an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. The incident, which occurred during a campaign rally on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, has prompted widespread condemnation and calls for accountability.
“The independent review to get to the bottom of what happened on July 13 continues, and I look forward to assessing its conclusions,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “We all know what happened that day can never happen again.”
During the rally, a gunman identified as 20-year-old Thomas Crooks fired from a rooftop, grazing Trump in the right ear and killing a rallygoer. Crooks was subsequently shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, a Republican, emphasized the need for a thorough investigation: “While Director Cheatle’s resignation is a step toward accountability, we need a full review of how these security failures happened so that we can prevent them going forward. We will continue our oversight of the Secret Service.”
Cheatle, who took responsibility for the security lapse, described the shooting as “the largest failure by the Secret Service since then-President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.” Her resignation follows her testimony before the House Oversight Committee, where she faced bipartisan criticism for declining to provide details on the rally’s security plan and the agency’s response to the suspicious behavior of the gunman.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that Secret Service Deputy Director Ronald Rowe, a 24-year veteran of the agency, will serve as acting director.
The incident has also led to the formation of a bipartisan task force to probe the shooting. Much of the criticism has centered on the failure to secure the rooftop of an industrial building where Crooks was positioned, a location that was declared outside the Secret Service security perimeter for the event.
President Biden, who recently ended his reelection campaign, stressed the importance of the independent review: “We need to understand precisely what went wrong to ensure that such a breach of security never happens again.”
Cheatle, who had led the agency since 2022, previously held a top security role at PepsiCo and served 27 years in the Secret Service. Her tenure was marked by efforts to recover the agency’s reputation following a series of scandals, including the erasure of text messages from around the time of the January 6 Capitol attack and the 2012 incident involving agents bringing prostitutes to their hotel rooms ahead of a presidential trip to Colombia.
The Secret Service now faces multiple congressional investigations and an internal review by the Department of Homeland Security to address the security failures and restore confidence in its ability to protect current and former U.S. president
