Secret Service director resigns after Trump assassination attempt: reports
Jacob Knutson
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle in Chicago in June 2024. Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images
U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday following the attempted assassination of former President Trump earlier this month at a rally in Pennsylvania, according to multiple media outlets.
Why it matters: The shooting by a lone gunman killed one person and wounded the Republican presidential nominee and two others. By Cheatle's own admission, it marked the "most significant operational failure of the Secret Service in decades."Cheatle told a House committee in mid-July that she took "full responsibility" for the lapses that led to the shooting.
Context: Cheatle resigned as the Secret Service faces intense scrutiny from numerous federal and congressional probes into its handling of security before and during Trump's political rally near Butler, Pennsylvania.Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers called on her to step down over the lapses.
Zoom in: House lawmakers have said that FBI and Secret Service officials told them that the building from which the gunman fired his shots was identified as "an area of concern" as early as five days ahead of the event.On the day of the rally, the Secret Service was notified of a suspicious person with a rangefinder about 10 minutes before Trump walked on stage and roughly 20 minutes before shots were fired.
Zoom out: The Secret Service had increased its protective measures around Trump ahead of the rally after the U.S. received intelligence concerning an Iranian plot to assassinate him.However, the service had also denied requests for additional federal resources from Trump's security detail over the two years before the assassination attempt, according to the New York Times.
The big picture: The FBI, which is investigating the shooting as a potential act of domestic terrorism, has yet to determine the gunman's motive.The little information so far released about the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, has not clearly indicated political or ideological intentions behind the attack.
Crooks was registered as a Republican and donated money to a Democratic political action committee, but was also too young to have voted in any previous presidential elections.
Go deeper: Trump rally violence recalls historic presidential attacks
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