Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) appeared on FNC’s “Your World” and called on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to appear publicly before the Senate Homeland Security Committee in response to the assassination attempt on former President Joe Biden.
The Missouri Republican slammed Cheatle, saying he was “not adequately prepared” to answer questions during a “behind the scenes” briefing.
A partial transcript follows:
Cavuto: How was it?
Holly: That’s awful.
I mean, to be completely honest with you, the Secret Service and the FBI do have secret conference calls and behind-the-scenes briefings, but by the way, they don’t actually answer questions. They severely limit the number of questions. The Director of the Secret Service herself doesn’t actually brief them. She’s been on the conference calls, but she doesn’t brief them much.
When she tried to answer a question or two it didn’t go well. She wasn’t adequately prepared. At the end of the day, this needs to be done in public. We need public hearings. We need a full and thorough investigation.
Neil, what we know about this is that 62 minutes, 62 minutes passed between the time the Secret Service identified the shooter as a suspect, someone who was acting suspiciously, and the time that shooter began firing at the president.
I mean, what on earth is going on? We need to find out.
Cavuto: I misspoke. Of course, that explanation was yesterday. There will be many more explanations to come. We want to hold the authorities accountable and find out what is behind their thinking.
But, as you say, Senator, she’s saying she’s not going to resign. She’s going to stay. And she’s going to stay unless the president or Alejandro Mayorkas, her boss at Homeland Security, kicks her out, right?
Holly: Yes.
Nobody — this is a pattern, Neil. Nobody in this administration is accountable or responsible for anything. Look at Afghanistan. 13 service members died and hundreds, maybe thousands, of civilians were left behind by the enemy. What did Joe Biden do? Nothing. Who was fired? Nobody.
Now we have an ex-president who was almost assassinated. A good American was shot and killed at this rally, and others are seriously injured, and no one is willing to take responsibility. So these people need to go. Of course, the people in charge need to go. The entire senior leadership needs to go.
But I will be very clear: We’re going to get to the bottom of this and we’re going to find out what these people were doing. Why did they allow this to happen? Why did they allow a good American to be killed? Why did they allow Trump to get on stage knowing that there was a potential shooter there? It’s outrageous.
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