Assassination attempt on Trump Head of the Secret Service admits failure - clues ignored
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle emphasizes the difference between suspicious and threatening. Her appearance infuriates members of both parties.
22.07.2024, 22:37
22.07.2024, 22:38
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- During questioning in the US Congress on Monday, Secret Service chief Kimberly Cheatle spoke of the biggest failure of her agency in a mission in decades.
- Employees of the agency were repeatedly alerted to a suspicious person at the Republican campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
- Nevertheless, insufficient precautions were taken, allowing a gunman to shoot at Trump. Trump was injured in the ear and a spectator was killed.
Before the attempted assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, the Secret Service was repeatedly alerted to a suspicious person at the campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Trump's bodyguards had received such tips "between two and five times", said Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle during questioning in the US Congress on Monday.
However, there is a difference between someone being classified as a "suspect" and an "actual threat". If they had assumed there was a real threat to Trump's life, the bodyguards would have ended the event immediately, Cheatle said.
The head of the Secret Service spoke of her agency's biggest failure in an operation for decades. She accepts full responsibility for this and has asked Trump for forgiveness over the phone. However, she did not announce her resignation, as many MPs had demanded. Instead, she said that she would do everything in her power to prevent something like this from happening again.
Eyewitnesses saw the shooter climb onto a roof
The 20-year-old gunman had positioned himself with an assault rifle on a roof overlooking the stage at the rally in Pennsylvania and fired at Trump from there. Trump was injured in the ear and a spectator was killed. Earlier, police officers on the scene saw the suspect handling a rangefinder at the edge of the event site. Eyewitnesses then saw him climb onto the roof.
Cheatle admitted that the roof had been identified as a potential source of danger days before the rally. When asked why there were no agents on the roof or whether the secret service had been monitoring the area with drones, Cheatle replied that she was still waiting for the outcome of the investigation.
Members of parliament reacted indignantly. Republican Mike Turner accused Cheatle of incompetence. If Trump had been killed, she would be partly to blame. Democrat Ro Khanna recalled the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, after which the then Secret Service director resigned. "What we need in this country are agencies that transcend politics and have the trust of independents, Democrats, Republicans, progressives and conservatives," he said. The Secret Service is no longer one of those agencies, he added.
