Kimberly Cheatle, Director of the US Secret Service, tendered her resignation on Tuesday following the acknowledgment that the agency had not succeeded in preventing an assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Cheatle had been under pressure from both sides of the aisle to resign after a 20-year-old shooter injured the former Republican president and current White House candidate during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13th.
“It is overdue, she should have done this at least a week ago,” Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, told reporters. “I’m happy to see that she has heeded the call of both Republicans and Democrats.”
On Monday, Cheatle testified before a congressional committee, admitting that the assault on Trump, who sustained minor injuries to his right ear, marked a failure on the part of the Secret Service.
She called it “the most significant operational failure of the Secret Service in decades.”
Cheatle faced demands for resignation from both Republicans and Democrats alike. Lawmakers from both sides criticized her for withholding specific details about the attack, citing ongoing investigations as the reason for her reticence.
Just moments after Trump began his speech at the campaign event, the gunman fired shots at him using an AR-style assault rifle.
Positioned atop a neighboring building, he was swiftly neutralized by a Secret Service sniper within half a minute of firing eight shots. Investigators have determined that the young man, residing approximately 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Butler, acted independently, without clear ideological or political affiliations.
At the rally, two participants were gravely injured while a 50-year-old Pennsylvania firefighter named Corey Comperatore was fatally shot. Trump’s ex-physician disclosed last weekend that the Republican nominee suffered a two-centimeter (nearly one-inch) gunshot wound to his right ear.
According to former White House physician Ronny Jackson, the bullet narrowly missed entering his head by less than a quarter of an inch, instead hitting the top of his right ear.
After a 27-year career as a Secret Service agent, Cheatle departed in 2021 to assume the role of head of security for North America at PepsiCo. She was appointed to lead the agency by President Joe Biden in 2022.
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