House Speaker Mike Johnson said he’s prepared to call on President Biden on Thursday morning to fire U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle if she does not resign.
“I’m prepared this morning to call on President Biden to fire Director Cheatle,” Speaker Johnson told “Mornings with Maria” host Maria Bartiromo from the Republican National Convention. “Yesterday I said that she should resign. It’s clear that she has no intention to do so. But the oversight here, the mistakes, the ineptitude, whatever it is, was inexcusable.”
Cheatle appeared to backpedal Tuesday as her agency and local law enforcement pointed fingers over the security lapse at former President Trump’s Pennsylvania rally.
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Cheatle said in an interview with CNN the Secret Service was “solely responsible” for security at Trump’s rally, where 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks managed to climb on top of a nearby building and fire a rifle at Trump. One spectator was killed, and the Republican candidate and two others were injured during the attempted assassination on Saturday.
Speaker Johnson reportedly organized a call for all House members, Republican and Democrats, on Wednesday to speak with FBI Director Christopher Wray and Director Cheatle to try to “get down to the bottom of it.”
“They did not give us satisfactory answers to some very important questions, and some of it needs to be in a classified setting, I suppose,” Johnson said.
“But we’re going to say this publicly, and it begins on your show this morning that we need to get that done,” the speaker continued. “We have to have accountability, and we have to have responsibility. The Secret Service has a critical job. The No. 1 job is to protect the president, former presidents and those who are campaigning for the office in this case. And they did none of that.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general has opened a probe into the Secret Service handling of Trump’s rally. It comes after President Biden announced earlier this week that he had directed an independent review of Saturday’s incident.
“We’re putting together a task force. We’re going to act with precision on this,” Johnson added. “It will be a bipartisan task force in the House with subpoena authority. We will get down to the bottom of this quickly so the American people have all the answers.”
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