SAUNDERS: ‘Face of incompetence’: Secret Service director must go

The U.S. Secret Service has become “the face of incompetence,” House Oversight Chair James Comer told U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle as she testified Monday before his committee.

The day did not go well for Cheatle, who offered no good explanation as to how a 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to out-maneuver the Secret Service, a $3 billion agency, and plant himself and his father’s AR-15 on top of a rooftop within range of Donald Trump as the former president spoke at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13.

Cheatle admitted that the failed assassination attempt, which wounded the GOP nominee and left Trump supporter Corey Comperatore dead and two other rally attendees seriously injured, was “the most significant operational failure in the Secret Service for decades.”

And she admitted the Secret Service had been told about a suspicious person on a nearby building “two to five times” before the shooter opened fire. The threat risk that day was elevated from suspicious to a threat only “seconds” before the Pennsylvanian fired at the former president, Cheatle told the committee.

But ABC News reported last week that the Secret Service spotted the shooter on a roof 20 minutes before shots were fired.

A government sniper killed the would-be assassin.

Cheatle also made a claim that tainted every other word out of her mouth: “I have taken accountability.”

If you wonder why government doesn’t seem to work anymore, look no further.

Cheatle has not resigned. President Joe Biden has not fired her.

That cannot last.

Americans’ trust in government wasn’t exactly high before the shooting — because there is no accountability in Washington.

As Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, told Cheatle, “Because Donald Trump is alive, and thank God he is, you look incompetent. If Donald Trump had been killed, you would have looked culpable.”

Members on both sides of the aisle voiced outrage at what Ranking Democrat Jamie Raskin of Maryland referred to as “shocking” operational failures.

There also was an ideological divide as to contributing factors. For Democrats, it’s the lack of an assault-weapons ban, while Republicans asserted that Biden-era diversity, equity and inclusion policies have undermined the effectiveness of federal law enforcement.

Cheatle did not bite at the opportunity to blame gun laws; she countered that the shooting failure had nothing to do with DEI, but “has to do with a failure or a gap either in planning or communication.”

Meanwhile, there is a basic question that has to yet to be answered. As Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., asked, “Why was President Trump allowed on stage after the Secret Service spotted a suspicious individual?”

My instinct usually is to blame incompetence for what others see as bad faith inside government. But I have yet to hear a plausible explanation for how agents failed to respond, instantaneously, as they were trained to do.

I’m a conservative, but even I have never imagined government could be this incompetent.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on x.