Speaker Johnson Is the Latest Lawmaker To Call for Resignation of Secret Service Director
Johnson pledges to set up a task force to help streamline various congressional investigations.
![AP/Morry Gash](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwp.nysun.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F07%2Fcheatle.jpg&w=1200&q=75)
The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is the latest lawmaker to call for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign following the security agency’s near-fatal security failures on Saturday.
“I think it’s inexcusable,” he told Fox News on Wednesday, describing the near-assassination of President Trump at a Pennsylvania rally which killed one rally-goer and left two others critically injured.
Six committees across both the House and the Senate have launched probes into the shooting. Mr. Johnson said that he will be setting up a task force in the House to streamline the various investigations.
“The reason we’re going to do it that way is because that is a more precision strike. It goes quicker, there’s not a lot of the procedural hurdles, and it will have subpoena authority for that task force as well,” Mr. Johnson said.
He also noted that he is “going to call for the resignation” of Ms. Cheatle.
His announcement comes just a day after the House majority leader, Steve Scalise, similarly called for Ms. Cheatle to step down. “I’ve been very disappointed in her lack of candor,” he said at a CNN-Politico event.
Questions loom over why there was no law enforcement coverage of the roof from which the 20-year-old shooter fired. The building in question was less than 150 yards from the rally stage.
Ms. Cheatle has said that the building’s “sloped roof” created safety concerns, though critics have pointed out that other Secret Service snipers were placed on a similarly sloping roof.
The Secret Service leader has, so far, committed to staying in her post. She told ABC News this week that she would not resign, adding, “The buck stops with me. I am the director of the Secret Service.”