Secret Service director resigns over failure to stop Trump gunman

The director of the US Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned yesterday just a day after a contentious House of Representatives hearing at which members of both parties called for her to stand down in the wake of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

- Robert Tait

Cheatle, who had served as director since August 2022, called the attempt on Trump's life the Secret Service's "most significant operational failure" in decades.

She told lawmakers at the hearing in which Republicans and Democrats indulged in a rare display of unity that she would take full responsibility for the security lapses. But she also angered her interrogators by failing to answer some specific questions about the agency's investigation into what had gone wrong.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old gunman who shot Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, had seemingly dodged the security surrounding the former president with ease and was able to open fire from a roof near the stage on which Trump was speaking. The attack came despite Crooks being spotted by onlookers at the rally who alerted law enforcement.

The assassination attempt failed but injured Trump and two other rally-goers and killed another. It roiled US politics and shocked political observers on all sides as it came amid widespread fears of a rise in political violence during a deeply fraught election campaign.

In her resignation letter to staff, Cheatle said: "The Secret Service's solemn mission is to protect our nation's leaders and financial infrastructure. On 13 July, we fell short on that mission. The scrutiny over the last week has been intense and will continue to remain as our operational tempo increases.