Secret Service Director Cheatle resigns in aftermath of Trump rally shooting

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday under intense pressure from Republicans and Democrats angered by the agency’s failure to prevent an assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump.

“In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your Director,” Cheatle wrote in a letter to staff, saying she took “full responsibility” for the failure.

“This incident does not define us,” Cheatle told staff. “I do not want my calls for resignation to be a distraction from the great work each and every one of you do towards our vital mission.”

The attack, in which a gunman opened fire with an AR-style rifle from an unsecured roof at a Trump presidential campaign rally July 13, was the first against a U.S. leader on the elite protective agency’s watch in more than 40 years. Cheatle, a veteran Secret Service agent, had called the security failure unacceptable and acknowledged that “the buck stops with me.”

She initially had said she would not resign and would cooperate with investigations into the shooting.

But during a House Oversight Committee hearing Monday, Cheatle faced calls from Republicans and Democrats to resign. Lawmakers criticized her for declining to answer detailed questions about what went wrong at the Trump rally.

After Cheatle’s resignation, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., took credit for pushing her out and pledged “more accountability to come.”

“Egregious security failures leading up to and at the Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally resulted in the assassination attempt of President Trump, the murder of an innocent victim, and harm to others in the crowd,” Comer said in a statement. “We will continue our oversight of the Secret Service in support of the House Task Force to deliver transparency, accountability, and solutions to ensure this never happens again.”

Ronald Rowe, the Secret Service’s second-ranking official, will take over as acting director, the Department of Homeland Security said. Rowe, a 24-year veteran of the agency, was appointed deputy director in April 2023, with responsibility for the agency’s daily investigative and protective operations.

President Biden issued a statement praising Cheatle’s decision to resign.

“As a leader, it takes honor, courage, and incredible integrity to take full responsibility for an organization tasked with one of the most challenging jobs in public service,” the president said. “We all know what happened that day can never happen again.”

Congressional inquiries into the assassination attempt were ongoing Tuesday as the news of Cheatle’s decision began to circulate. Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, conducted a hearing with the commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police, Col. Christopher Paris.

At the hearing, Paris testified that authorities were still trying to nail down the sequence of events leading up to the shooting.

Paris confirmed that two local tactical officers had been posted at a window overlooking the roof where the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was found. But Paris said the officers had left that perch before the shooting to search for Crooks in the crowd.

Paris said officers had flagged Crooks as suspicious because he was milling around the perimeter with a range-finder instead of proceeding toward the rally. The officers alerted the State Police about Crooks, he said, and the State Police immediately notified the Secret Service. It was unclear why Trump was then allowed to take the stage.

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., said at the hearing Tuesday it was “incredibly disappointing” that Cheatle didn’t provide the same information during her testimony Monday before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, where lawmakers from both parties called on her to resign.

“I think it is good that we’re going to have somebody new at the top, but just having somebody new does not answer the questions,” Goldman said.

Cheatle said Monday that an internal review should be available within 60 days, and a separate independent report ordered by Biden was due in 45 days. The FBI is leading the main investigation into the shooting.

Goldman and other lawmakers, however, said they need answers sooner.

Cheatle returned to the Secret Service in September 2022 after taking a job as a top security official at Pepsi Co. North America.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas noted that decision in a statement Tuesday thanking her for returning from retirement to head the agency “to which she has devoted her career.”

Bill Gage, a former Secret Service counterassault agent who worked on presidential protection during the Bush and Obama administrations, faulted Cheatle for failing to aggressively demand the resources that the Secret Service needs to perform its mission.

Gage said in an interview that problems identified almost 10 years ago in a series of Washington Post investigative stories, a bipartisan House Oversight Committee investigation and a panel report commissioned by President Barack Obama – that the Secret Service was struggling with limited funds and staff and spread too thin to cover its expanding mission – remain largely unfixed.

Trump wore a bandage over his right ear as he attended the Republican National Convention last week. The attack killed one man and gravely wounded two others.

The shooting marked the first time in decades that a U.S. leader was attacked while under Secret Service protection. In 1981, a gunman fired at President Ronald Reagan in Washington, wounding the president and three others.

Top officials at the U.S. Secret Service repeatedly denied requests for additional personnel and equipment sought by Trump’s security detail in the two years leading up to the rally shooting in Pennsylvania, according to four people familiar with the requests.

Agents charged with protecting Trump requested magnetometers and more agents to screen attendees at large public gatherings he attended, as well as additional sharpshooters and specialty teams at other outdoor events, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive security discussions. The requests were sometimes denied by senior officials at the agency, who cited reasons including a lack of resources at an agency that has struggled with staffing shortages, they said.

Cheatle told lawmakers no specific requests were denied for the rally in Butler.

Secret Service officials have encouraged Trump’s campaign to stop scheduling large outdoor rallies and other outdoor events, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

When Biden named Cheatle as his Secret Service director in 2022, some inside the agency opposed her appointment, according to a half-dozen written complaints that Secret Service agents sent to The Post around that time and in the two years since.

In the complaints, her critics pointed to Cheatle’s lack of experience working in a senior post on a presidential protection detail – considered by many to be the pinnacle of agency service – and saying later in her tenure that she was excessively focused on hiring and promoting more women agents.

Cheatle’s handling of the shooting had further eroded support for her leadership inside the agency, according to a dozen current and former Secret Service officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. Many agents and Secret Service alumni were disturbed by the failure to sufficiently secure the rooftop that the gunman scaled, they said.

In addition, six of the former agents, all of whom have served in presidential protection details, told The Post that they found Cheatle’s public statements about security for the Butler campaign event embarrassing.

They said they were particularly outraged by two comments she made in an interview with ABC News that aired days after the shooting.

First, she said local police were responsible for securing the building on the outer perimeter of the event, implying that they were to blame for the gunman getting atop the roof and being able to shoot at Trump’s stage. Second, she said no officer was stationed on the roof that the gunman used in part because of a “safety factor” related to its slope. The Post previously reported that Secret Service countersnipers at the rally were positioned on steeper roofs.

Cheatle’s resignation caps a series of tumultuous years for the Secret Service, amid concerns that weak spots in the agency’s training, strategy and operations remain unresolved.

Before the shooting, the agency was scrutinized for deleting text messages that agents sent during Trump supporters’ Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, depriving investigators of potentially valuable evidence. The agency said the messages were lost during a planned replacement of the agents’ devices.

In November 2011, a man armed with a semiautomatic rifle fired shots into the White House. Agents at first dismissed the noises as a construction vehicle backfiring and did not realize for four days that bullets had hit the residence.

In 2012, the agency was embarrassed by agents who brought prostitutes to their hotel rooms in Cartagena, Colombia, while arranging advance security for Obama’s visit to the city. In 2014, an armed security guard with an arrest record was allowed to share an elevator with Obama during a presidential visit to Atlanta.

Days later, a man carrying a folding knife jumped the fence outside the White House, sprinted past a Secret Service agent and made it into the East Room before being tackled by an agent.

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson, who in 2013 became the first woman to lead the agency, resigned in 2014.

Cheatle was the agency’s 27th director and the second woman to lead the agency. She was sworn in on Sept. 17, 2022.

She had spent more than 25 years in the Secret Service in various roles, including running the Atlanta office and then becoming assistant director of the Office of Protective Operations, the first woman in that role.

“That achievement in a male-dominated industry was not lost on me,” Cheatle said in a 2022 interview with Security magazine.

Cheatle served on Biden’s protective detail when he was vice president. Biden awarded Cheatle a Presidential Rank Award in 2021 for her exceptional performance over time.