Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the United States Secret Service, has resigned in response to growing calls from lawmakers to do so following former President Donald Trump’s assassination attempt on July 13, according to three sources.
An official notification of her resignation is likely later today, according to two law enforcement officials.
Cheatle resigned a day after being questioned by irate senators from both parties over the Secret Service’s inability to protect Trump.
Her comments did not satisfy the leaders of the House Oversight Committee, who convened the hearing on Monday.
“Today, you failed to provide answers to basic questions regarding that stunning operational failure and to reassure the American people that the Secret Service has learned its lessons and begun to correct its systemic blunders and failures,” Chairman James Comer R-Ky., and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., wrote in a joint letter to Cheatle hours after the hearing ended.
The two members said that the committee and American people “demand serious institutional accountability and transparency that you are not providing,” especially during a presidential election year.
“We call on you to resign as Director as a first step to allowing new leadership to swiftly address this crisis and rebuild the trust of a truly concerned Congress and the American people,” they wrote.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and several other top Republicans, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso, R-Wyo., had called on Cheatle to resign.
“She needs to go,” Barrasso, told NBC News’ Hallie Jackson after a Senate briefing on the shooting last week.
In an interview with ABC News last week, Kimberly Cheatle said the “buck” stopped with her.
The agency was conducting a review of the incident, she said, and she did not have all the details about what happened. But Cheatle said there had been a “very short” period between when the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was reported as potentially suspicious and when he began shooting from a rooftop.
After a Senate briefing Wednesday on the assassination attempt, two sources familiar with the proceedings said that window of time was 62 minutes.
The sources also said Secret Service agents spotted Crooks on a rooftop 10 minutes before Trump took the stage, and 20 minutes elapsed before he opened fire.
Trump has said he was shot in the upper part of his right ear. A former fire official, Corey Comperatore, died in the shooting. Two others were injured and hospitalized, and their conditions have improved.
