WASHINGTON (TND) — The director of the Secret Service has resigned from her job amid mounting pressure from lawmakers following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump last week in Pennsylvania that sparked numerous investigations and outcry about how the agency failed its chief mission.
Kimberly Cheatle told her staff in an email that she would be stepping down from the job Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.
“I take full responsibility for the security lapse,” she said in the email to staff Tuesday. “In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your director.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas named deputy director Ronald Rowe as acting director of Secret Service until a permanent replacement is decided.
“The Secret Service is the greatest protective service in the world, with one of the most difficult and solemn missions in government. I have the utmost confidence in Deputy Director Rowe and the men and women of the Secret Service, who put their lives on the line every day and deserve our full support," Mayorkas said in a statement.
Her resignation comes a day after she was grilled by lawmakers for hours about how the agency she leads allowed a gunman to climb onto a roof just 150 yards away from where Trump would be speaking and open fire on him and the crowd. She was frequently pressed to resign by members on both sides of the aisle in the marathon hearing and berated for the security lapses she described as the "most significant operational failure" in decades.
“The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on July 13th is the most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades,” Cheatle said at Monday's House Oversight hearing. “As the Director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse.”
In her announcement, she signaled that her resignation is unlikely to cool the heavy scrutiny facing the agency. Many congressional committees have launched probes into the shooting, what led up to it and what lapses occurred that allowed the gunman to shoot at the former president and current Republican nominee, along with separate investigations from the Department of Homeland Security and its inspector general.
“The scrutiny over the last week has been intense and will continue to remain as our operational tempo increases,” Cheatle said in her note to staff.
President Joe Biden thanked Cheatle for her service and said he planned to appoint a new director soon in a statement.
"The independent review to get to the bottom of what happened on July 13 continues, and I look forward to assessing its conclusions. We all know what happened that day can never happen again," Biden said.
Along with refusing to resign, she also dodged questions about specific details of the security plan, the events that took place and what led up to it in a repeated cycle that drew audible groans from lawmakers.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who announced a bipartisan task force to investigate the security lapses at the rally, said her resignation was overdue.
“The immediate reaction to her resignation is that it is overdue. She should have done this at least a week ago. I'm happy to see that. I'm happy to see that she has heeded the call of both Republicans and Democrats. Now we have to pick up the pieces," Johnson said.
Secret Service is also under heavy pressure to ramp up security at campaign stops for Trump, running mate JD Vance and Vice President Kamala Harris. Protection at the Democratic National Convention next month in Chicago will also be closely watched.
In response to Cheatle's resignation, Trump said that the Biden administration failed to protect him properly.
"The Biden/Harris Administration did not properly protect me, and I was forced to take a bullet for Democracy. IT WAS MY GREAT HONOR TO DO SO!” he said in a post on his social media website Truth Social.
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