Secret Service chief takes responsibility for failures after Trump attack

The head of the Secret Service said Monday that the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was the agency’s “most significant operational failure” in decades.

“On July 13, we failed,” Kimberly Cheatle told the House Oversight Committee, where she took full responsibility for the agency’s mistakes related to the attack at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania.

It is Cheatle’s first appearance before lawmakers since The July 13 shooting that left one bystander deadTrump was hit in the ear and two other aides were wounded after Thomas Matthew Crooks fired shots from a nearby building.

Lawmakers have expressed anger at how the attacker was able to get so close to the Republican presidential candidate when he was supposed to be under close surveillance. The Secret Service has acknowledged that years earlier it had turned down some requests from the Trump campaign to increase security at its events.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called the incident a “failure,” while several lawmakers have called for Cheatle to resign. The Secret Service has said she has no intention of resigning, and so far she retains the support of President Joe Biden and Mayorkas.

The attack on Trump was the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It was the latest in a series of security lapses by the agency that has drawn investigations and public scrutiny over the years.

Authorities have been searching for clues about what motivated Crooks, but so far have found no ideological leanings that could help explain his actions. Investigators who searched his phone found photos of Trump, Biden and other top government officials, and also discovered that he had searched for the dates of the Democratic National Convention as well as appearances by Trump.

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