The director of the Secret Service resigned Tuesday amid growing criticism over security lapses during the assassination attempt against former President Trump.
Kimberly Cheatle had faced growing calls to step down from both Democrats and Republicans.
“I take full responsibility for the security lapse,” she said in an email to staff Tuesday. “In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your director.”
In a stunning admission Monday, she said that local authorities observed and photographed the man who shot at Trump 18 minutes before the former president took the stage at a rally in Pennsylvania.
It was one of several security lapses revealed at a congressional hearing into what Cheatle described as the “most significant operational failure” of the agency in decades.
Read more: Authorities saw gunman on roof 18 minutes before Trump stepped on stage, Secret Service chief admits
The new information sparked outrage from lawmakers and a rare moment of agreement between House oversight committee Chair James R. Comer Jr. (R-Ky.) and ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who called on her to resign.
“I also didn’t see any daylight between the members of the two parties today at the hearing in terms of our bafflement and outrage about the shocking operational failures that led to this disaster,” Raskin said.
At a campaign event in Pennsylvania on July 13, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired eight shots at Trump from a rooftop, injuring Trump’s ear, killing a spectator and wounding two others. Within 10 seconds of the first shot, Crooks was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
But questions from members of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability about how a man with a rifle was able to get within firing range of the former president — on a rooftop uncovered by the Secret Service, no less — went mostly unanswered.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
