Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) criticized Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle for security blunders at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Cheatle is Hearing On Monday, he will testify before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee about the attempted assassination of President Trump. The hearing comes more than a week after President Trump was shot with a “penetrating bullet” above his right ear at a July 13 rally.
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During the hearing, Ocasio-Cortez criticized Cheatle for releasing a timeline of investigative reports into security lapses at the rally and questioned why the Secret Service’s security range was shorter than the range of an AR-15.
Frost asked Cheatle why the event wasn’t cancelled despite multiple warnings about Crooks before Trump took the stage.
“How many times did the Secret Service receive notifications about suspicious people at the election event on July 13 before the first shots were fired?” Frost asked.
“I can’t give you an exact number today, but from what I can gather, there have been anywhere between two and five calls of some kind regarding a suspicious person,” Cheatle replied.
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“The Secret Service specifically?” Frost asked Cheatle. She replied:
According to reports, the gunman was photographed twice by security guards before the shooting. A police officer saw the gunman on the ground and reported him as a suspicious person with a photo. Local police officers identified the gunman and radioed in to report he was acting suspiciously near the incident’s magnetic detector. A local police tactical team saw the gunman on the roof and notified other security officers, who also took photos of the gunman. One of the officers who took the photo of the gunman also saw the gunman scouting the roof and holding a rangefinder.
“Why didn’t you stop the event at that point?” Frost continued to press Cheatle.
When Cheatle said the “timeline is unclear” of when the Secret Service and counter-sniper teams were notified that there was a threat or suspicious activity at the rally, Frost pointed out that she had previously said “the Secret Service would have suspended the rally if they had identified a threat.”
The AR-15 has a range of about 600 yards, so why was the Secret Service’s range shorter than one of the most popular weapons in the U.S.?@AOC pic.twitter.com/I98Me2LUAR
— Brennan Murphy (@brenonade) July 22, 2024
Ms Ocasio-Cortez also criticised Ms Cheatle during the hearing, questioning whether there was a “standard perimeter” the Secret Service had set up around the event.
“Director Cheatle, is there a standard perimeter that the Secret Service sets up around an incident or is that perimeter determined individually for each incident or scenario?” Ocasio-Cortez asked.
Cheatle responded that the Secret Service does not have “standard” boundaries for events and that each event and venue is “different.”
“So each event has different boundaries that are set depending on the logistics of that event,” Ocasio-Cortez responded. “Now, you just confirmed that the building where the shooter was operating from was outside of those established boundaries at the Butler, Pennsylvania event.”
After Cheatle acknowledged this, Ocasio-Cortez continued to press how far the shooter’s building was from Trump.
Cheatle confirmed that the building is “about 200 yards” away from Trump.
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“Two hundred yards,” Ocasio-Cortez continued, “and by the way, this individual used an AR-15 in his assassination attempt. An AR-15 has a range of about 400-600 yards. My question is, why is the Secret Service’s protective range shorter than one of the most popular semi-automatic rifles in the United States?”
Cheatle has faced intense criticism and calls for his resignation over security failings at the Trump rally, following the shooting by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of a building in direct view of Trump.
Crooks positioned himself on a rooftop within 500 feet of President Trump and was able to fire eight shots.
In an interview with ABC News, Cheatle acknowledged that he did not station investigators on the roof where Crooks was located due to “safety factors” associated with placing someone on a “sloping roof.”
Cheatle also previously acknowledged that police officers were in the building where Crooks was located.
