The House Homeland Security Committee Reports on the July 13 Indirect Detection of the Center for Disease Control. A panel discussion at a panel meeting in Butler
The congressional probes are in addition to the Homeland Security panel and their Republican counterpart. A House Homeland Security panel will visit the location of the shooting in person in Butler today and discuss their findings with a bipartisan group of people.
In addition, the panel’s chairman, Tennessee Republican Mark Green, has also called for additional testimony from Cheatle plus top FBI and Homeland Security officials. However, Cheatle has yet to accept the invitation.
I think Director Cheatle should resign. However — in complete defiance — Director Cheatle has maintained she will not tender her resignation,” Comers said. She will answer questions from the Members of this Committee who are looking to find out how these events were allowed to take place.
“The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. Cheatle said that they failed on July 13th. “As the Director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse.”
The panel includes Janet Napolitano, the Obama-era DHS secretary; Fran Townsend, the Homeland Security adviser to President George W. Bush; former federal Judge Mark Filip, who served as Bush’s deputy attorney general; and David Mitchell, the former superintendent of Maryland State Police and former Secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security for the State of Delaware. Other experts could be named to the panel in the coming days.
“We are committed to getting to the bottom of what happened on July 13, and I am grateful to the distinguished members of this independent review who will bring decades of expertise in law enforcement and security operations to this important investigation,” Mayorkas said, adding: “This independent review will examine what happened and provide actionable recommendations to ensure they carry out their no-fail mission most effectively and to prevent something like this from ever happening again.”
Cheatle rejected claims the agency had denied the Trump team requests for additional security.
The Secret Service was called an agency in crisis by a bipartisan report nearly a decade ago. That so little seems to have been done to improve it — that a bureaucrat like Cheatle is still in office — will give many Americans even less reason to have faith in the government.
Cheatle told lawmakers the agency is fully cooperating with the FBI’s investigation, congressional oversight and conducting its own internal review. However, she was unable to answer most direct questions about the findings of her investigators, citing the ongoing nature of their work.
The hearing is expected to last hours and could last much of the day. It follows a growing list of investigations into the shooting and the Secret Service.
In some cases the agency made modifications in order to make sure the protectee’s safety was protected. It could include using state or local partners to provide specialized functions or identify alternatives to reduce public exposure of a protectee.
This includes several denials of requests for senna at public events including a rally in New York and Michigan in May of 2023. The Secret Service also did not have countersniper teams available for a July 2023 rally in South Carolina, and the request was instead fulfilled by local law enforcement.
Biden wasn’t fired: How frustrated was she when she realized he didn’t have a gun? And what she could have done if he hadn’t
Biden supposedly doesn’t like to fire people. Counterprogramming to the guy who got famous for saying he was fired. After months of a seemingly uncontrollable flow of migrants over the border and a promise to invest in infrastructure, questions were already being asked after the debacle of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Despite the devotion millions of Americans feel toward Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and Obamacare, and despite the benefits of President Biden’s infrastructure deal, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act, the federal ogre has been a potent motivator for Republican campaigns.
It would be difficult to find a straight answer from her when she testified for hours. Nine days after the shooting, she could not explain why no officer or agent had been on the roof from which the gunman fired. She could not say why that building was not in the agency’s security perimeter. She could not explain why her spokesman, as well as her boss, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, denied that Trump aides had urgently requested more protection.
The frustration with her was bipartisan. Most police chiefs agree with her that the prevalence of guns has made her job more difficult.
Jamie Raskin, who prosecuted the second impeachment trial and is the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, called for her resignation.
The value Democrats and Republicans place on the federal bureaucracy has been an essential dividing line between the two camps.