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The director of the US Secret Service admitted in a House of Representatives committee hearing Monday that the shooting of former President Donald Trump was a disaster for the agency.
"The assassination attempt of former President Trump on July 13th is the most significant operational failure of the Secret Service in decades," Kimberly Cheatle said Monday morning.
Cheatle had been called to testify before the House's Oversight and Accountability Committee to explain how the Secret Service allowed Thomas Matthew Crooks to get close enough to Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, nine days ago to shoot at him.
The event had been the first time a president or former president was shot since John Hinckley Jr. shot and injured Ronald Reagan in 1981, two months into his first term.
Crooks, 20, climbed onto the rooftop of a building 400 feet away from where Trump stood at the rally podium. With an AR-15, he injured Trump's ear, killed attendee Corey Comperatore, and injured two others before a Secret Service countersniper killed him.
At the public hearing Monday, Cheatle said she would "move Heaven and Earth" to ensure a shooting like that never happened again, but she offered few answers about the Secret Service's failure. Cheatle declined to answer substantive questions, citing an "ongoing investigation" from the FBI as well as the Secret Service.
Cheatle said the agency would complete its own investigation "within 60 days" — far longer than it took to complete a report following the Reagan shooting, which took less than a month following the shooting.
Neither the FBI nor the Secret Service have said whether they would make the investigation results public, as the agencies did in the aftermath of the Reagan shooting.
Cheatle said Monday that her agency was "still looking into the advance process" plan that the Secret Service used to determine why the roof wasn't properly secured ahead of the rally, and that no employees have been disciplined.
She said she had spoken to the countersniper who killed Crooks — with one shot — along with other agency members at Trump's rally, but refused to disclose the content of their conversations.
According to Cheatle, Crooks was recognized earlier in the day as a "suspicious" person but not a "threat." Had he been identified as a threat, she said, the rally would have been shut down.
Crooks was reportedly on the rooftop for 20 minutes before shooting at Trump.
The Secret Service has been criticized for previously denying Trump additional protection at events.
At the Pennsylvania rally, however, Cheatle said, "there were no assets denied."
Trump has also been the subject of an Iranian assassination plot, according to national security officials.
