Secret Service chief gets no solace

Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle appeared today before the House Oversight Committee. It was her first such hearing since the attempt on Donald Trump’s life on July 13. Not a single Member expressed anything but contempt toward her, with most calling for her immediate resignation. The Democrats spent about two-fifths of their time calling for general civilian gun control. But even they did not excuse Director Cheatle for the security lapses that let a would-be assassin (or assassins?) get close enough to President Trump to wing his ear, kill one attendee, and wound two others.

The Secret Service chief on the griddle

Secret Service Director Cheatle was the only witness to appear at a hearing that lasted nearly five hours. Even as she approached the Rayburn House Office Building for the hearing, hecklers screamed out an interesting insult.

You failed Cheatle in assassinating Trump! You failed! Satan isn’t all powerful. You’re on the wrong side and reap what you sow. God is good. God is in control, Cheatle!

Inside, Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) gave a disturbing answer to an Associated Press reporter asking what questions he had. He told the AP that “the more we know, the more questions we have.” Furthermore, he said, she should do “the only honorable thing” and resign.

As he convened the hearing, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the Chairman, called the Secret Service “the face of incompetence.”

Republicans pored over the official account of the events in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. Rep. Comer began with an obvious question: why didn’t the Service post a guard on the low-lying rooftop where Thomas Matthew Crooks took up station? She did not provide a single straight answer to that question, and similarly deflected other questions.

No solace, even from Democrats

Even Democrats found her testimony hard to believe – not so much questioning her veracity as her intelligence! For instance, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) asked about Crooks having a range finder on his person. Yes, said Cheatle, he did – but that was considered acceptable equipment for a bystander. In that regard: Radio Station WFPG-FM (96.9 MHz), serving Wildwood, New Jersey, carried a list of items no one was permitted to bring to Trump’s rally in that community. Small appliances appear on that list – but wouldn’t a range finder fall into that category? Apparently not! And that list came from the Secret Service!

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) asked her straight-out whether Crooks acted alone, or in concert with someone else. Said she, “I would have to refer you to the FBI.” In other words, she refused to answer the question, yes or no.

Nancy Mace gets down and dirty

Regrettably – but understandably – at least one Republican broke decorum. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) actually used barnyard and plain scatological language to call Cheatle out, resulting in points of order. Specifically, Rep. Mace demanded to know:

Why did the Secret Service chief not volunteer to come before the Committee? Why did it take a subpoena?

Could Cheatle explain why her opening statement went to three legacy and leftist media outlets before the Committee got it?

Would the Secret Service provide lists of its detail and all law-enforcement personnel at the rally, or not? That also went for audio and video recordings. All Cheatle could say was, “I’ll get back to you on that.” Whereupon Mace said she was full of it. That’s when the points of order rolled in. Mace continued with a more ladylike term: dishonest.

Did this episode with Trump represent “a failure of training, execution, or both?”

Have any Secret Service personnel lost their jobs?

How many, if any, have had to take refresher courses in how to secure a political rally?

And the kicker: how long did law enforcement know about Crooks before he took his shots? Answer: fifty-seven minutes.

Reenacting the scene: a basic failure of the Secret Service

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) had some of the worst questions for Cheatle. Why, for instance, has she still not visited the rally site nine days after the event? How soon after the event did she even call anyone on-site? Within twenty-four hours – or more like seventy-two hours​?Did she always plan to show up at the Republican National Convention – or hadn’t she scheduled herself to travel to Aspen, Colorado that week?

Fallon clawed over her excuse for not putting an agent on the roof: that it was sloped. That roof had a 1:12 pitch – and the counter-sniper team who shot and killed Crooks were on a 3:12 roof. (Fallon also observed that a 1:12 pitch is acceptable for a wheelchair ramp.) Worse: Fallon and his staff reenacted the shooting on a similarly sloped roof that Saturday night. At 6:30 p.m. local time, he fired sixteen rounds from an AR-15 he owns, using two kinds of scope. Results: fifteen out of sixteen “kill shots.”

Fifteen out of sixteen kill shots! And the one I missed would have hit the President’s ear. That’s a 94% success rate. And that shooter was a better shot than me.

It is a miracle President Trump wasn’t killed. Cory Campanatore’s life is over because that damn shooter made it on the roof. And it wasn’t the roof that was dangerous. It was a nut job on top of the roof. You know what else is dangerous? I believe your horrifying inaptitude and your lack of skilled leadership is a disgrace. Your obfuscating today is shameful, and you should be fired immediately and go back to guarding Doritos®.

The “Doritos” remark refers to Cheatle’s job before she signed on to direct the Secret Service. She served as director of global security for PepsiCo, which owns all the Frito-Lay brands, including Doritos® tortilla chips. In regard to that last: sources tell CNAV that standards of security at some major food companies might be much higher than those in apparent force at the Butler rally. C. W. Post, for instance, trains its lowliest janitors to watch for – and challenge – anyone walking around a food processing plant without proper identification.

Sour notes

But some Democrats took time to throw in ideologically motivated irrelevancies. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) started it, asking whether Cheatle thought the prevalence of “weapons of war” in the civilian population made the job of the Secret Service harder. Connolly referred to the AR-15, which is not government issue for soldiers. z0The AR-18, or M-16, can do one thing the AR-15 can’t: fire in full-automatic mode.) Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Shontel Brown (D-Ohio), Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), and especially Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) sounded similar refrains.

Incredibly, Cheatle did not seem even to want to answer those questions. Did she not recognize that these Democrats were giving her a soap box to expound on civilian gun control? Or did she start to wonder how it could avail her to give the pat answers these Representatives demanded?

In addition, Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) elicited answers from Cheatle concerning whether one could blame Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) for the near-death of Trump. Naturally, Cheatle said No. That exchange came about after Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) called Cheatle “a DEI horror story.” Burchett sounded that theme on X:

But those were the only questions to which Cheatle gave straight answers.

At the end of questioning, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the Ranking Member, insisted on bringing up gun control himself. In fact he got several opportunities when his fellow Democrats “yielded” to him “the balance of [their] time.”

Summary

Finally, Rep. Comer summed up the mood of most of the Committee. They do not trust Cheatle either to tell the truth or to protect public officials and candidates effectively. Even when sounding their irrelevant notes about gun control and “social justice,” Democrats were just as appalled as Republicans were. Tellingly, not one of them objected to repeated calls for Cheatle’s resignation or firing.

Comer also expressed disappointment that the hearing ended with no new answers as to how the near-assassination of Trump happened. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) hinted that a conspiracy might have been at work. In closing, Comer hinted that the questioning of Cheatle did not end with today’s session.

Republicans want to know why their chosen champion came close to death. Some (but not all) Democrats are already trying to blame guns in civilian hands. But no one had any comfort this day for a senior security officer who almost let a Presidential candidate die on her watch.