There was a surreal scene at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday as irate senior senators chased the embattled director of the U.S. Secret Service into a women’s bathroom.
‘You answer to us!’
‘You can’t hide from us!’
Senators Marsha Blackburn and John Barrasso shouted and pointed angrily – pursuing Secret Service director Kimberly A. Cheatle through the lobby of Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum and up a flight of stairs.
Cheatle, 53, flanked by her agents, scurried into the lavatory. Her staff held the door, blocking the livid lawmakers out.
‘It is appalling that the Secret Service Director refused to answer our questions,’ said Senator Blackburn after the incident.
A surreal scene unfolded at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday as two irate senior senators chased the embattled director of the U.S. Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, into a women’s bathroom
Experts tell DailyMail.com that these failings are a symptom of an ‘agency in crisis’ after decades of understaffing and corrupt promotion practices
Fury had erupted earlier in the day after Cheatle and her top aides briefed senators in a private conference call about the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in rural Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday.
Senator Barrasso called the meeting a ‘100% cover-your-a** briefing.’
Cheatle was apparently unable to explain how agents failed to stop Thomas Matthew Crooks from clambering onto a roof and shooting at Trump from less than 150 yards away – even though the gunman was spotted by law enforcement 20 minutes before the shots were fired.
‘No one has taken responsibility. No one has been held responsible. Someone has died. The president was almost killed. The head of the Secret Service needs to go,’ Barrasso said later.
Now as more fingers are pointed at Cheatle, new allegations have revealed the depth of dysfunction within the service, with Department of Homeland Security whistleblowers claiming the majority of Trump’s security detail on Saturday were ‘not even Secret Service’ and were ‘unfamiliar with standard protocols’.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley wrote to the DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Friday outlining those allegations and a litany of other claimed security flaws: ‘Detection canines were not used to monitor entry and detect threats in the usual manner.
Now as more fingers are pointed at Cheatle, new allegations have revealed the depth of dysfunction within the service, with Department of Homeland Security whistleblowers claiming the majority of Trump’s security detail on Saturday were ‘not even Secret Service’ and were ‘unfamiliar with standard protocols’.
‘Individuals without proper designations were able to gain access to backstage areas. Department personnel did not appropriately police the security buffer around the podium and were also not stationed at regular intervals around the event’s security perimeter.’
Whether or not Hawley’s wild claims are true, the Secret Service and Cheatle have a lot to answer for.
And now experts tell DailyMail.com that these failings are a symptom of an ‘agency in crisis’ after decades of understaffing and corrupt promotion and hiring practices.
John Koskinen, from the nonpartisan National Academy of Public Administration, led an 18-month study into the Secret Service’s workforce in 2019.
Saturday’s events shocked him, but Koskinen was not surprised by the whistleblower claims, telling DailyMail.com that the Service has been struggling to cover an increasing number of people and respond to more sophisticated threats in recent years.
‘Life has gotten much more complicated,’ he said, ‘the threats are more sophisticated and ongoing, and now you’re in the middle of a campaign.’
Cheatle, 53, was appointed director of the Secret Service in 2022, having worked for the agency for 27 years before leaving in 2019 to head up global security at PepsiCo.
Announcing her selection, President Joe Biden revealed that ‘Kim’ had ‘served on my security detail when I was Vice President’ and he and Dr. Jill Biden ‘came to trust her judgment and counsel’.
Some sources went as far as to tell the New York Post on Monday that Cheatle had been personally tapped for the role by First Lady Jill Biden’s top aide, Anthony Bernal, who is reportedly ‘obsessed’ with DEI.
‘Cheatle served on Dr. Biden’s second lady detail and Anthony pushed for her,’ one source said. ‘I heard at the time she was being considered for director that Anthony had pushed her forward as an option,’ another added.
For her part, Cheatle has spoken openly about her goals of raising the number of the agency’s female recruits to 30 percent of all new hires by the year 2030.
And she hasn’t done herself any favors in public appearances since that shock security failure in Pennsylvania on last weekend.
Cheatle said in an interview on ABC News days after the shooting that agents did not secure the roof from which the assassin fired because, ‘That building in particular has a sloped roof, at its highest point… And so, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof.’
Critics, like former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker said that explanation was ‘absurd.’
For her part, Cheatle (above, right) has spoken openly about her goals of raising the number of the agency’s female recruits to 30 percent of all new hires by the year 2030.
‘Nobody’s saying you have to have somebody on the rooftop. You need to have eyes on the rooftop 100 percent of the time,’ he told the Mail. ‘If they’re too scared to climb up on top of the roof, just keep your eyes on it.’
Tristan Leavitt, who ran a year-long investigation into the Secret Service for the GOP Oversight Committee in 2015, told DailyMail.com it was likely that Cheatle was promoted due to her close relationship with the Bidens.
‘It is pretty standard,’ he said, ‘directors have typically come from within, so if you’re going to pick someone from within, you’re going to pick someone you have a good relationship with.’
The danger, Leavitt says, is that personal connection is ‘not a great basis on which to select someone’.
He added: ‘The assassination attempt on Saturday appears to be closely associated to a manpower issue, the Secret Service have been hemorrhaging staff for a long time’.
‘Many, many agents within the Secret Service thought that within the service the best people weren’t being promoted, it’s more about who you knew,’ he said. ‘It’s an agency in crisis.’
Of course, previous Secret Service directors have also worked closely with presidents prior to their selection.
James Murray, who was the director before Cheatle, served at Trump’s 2016 election and inauguration, and Joe Clancy, a few years before him, served in Barack Obama’s personal protection detail.
However, this is not the first time that Cheatle’s or the Secret Service’s close ties to the Bidens have been called into question.
Experts tell DailyMail.com that these failings are a symptom of an ‘agency in crisis’ after decades of understaffing and corrupt promotion and hiring practices.
Agents were accused of improperly intervening in the investigation into whether the President’s son Hunter Biden lied on federal firearms forms to buy a revolver at a Delaware gun shop in 2018.
In June, Hunter was convicted on three felony charges related to the purchase.
But early on in that case, FBI documents revealed, that the gun store owner claimed that Secret Service agents showed up at his business and asked to remove the documents Hunter has signed.
The shop-owner refused and the agents allegedly left.
The Secret Service has denied the claims, but two years later, the government transparency group Judicial Watch obtained hundreds of pages of internal communications between Secret Service officials about the alleged incident.
The documents revealed that agency officials discussed media reports of the incident.
One agent found it ‘odd’ that the agency would be involved in the investigation since the Biden Family was not receiving Secret Service protection at the time.
Another official responded: ‘Maybe we were asked for a favor?’
‘These new documents suggest that one can’t take at face value the Secret Service’s denial that it wasn’t involved in the Hunter Biden gun cover-up,’ Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told DailyMail.com at the time.
Cheatle herself was then dragged into the debacle surrounding Hunter’s trials in September 2023, when the House Oversight Committee ordered her to make her employees available for interview after whistleblowers alleged Secret Service agents tipped off the Bidens about an IRS investigation into Hunter.
Additionally, IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley and FBI supervisory special agent Joe Gordon alleged that they were told by FBI brass to wait for Secret Service permission before they could go to Hunter’s home to interview him.
According to Shapley and Gordon that Secret Service call never came.
Following Trump’s near-death, Leavitt says there is no way Cheatle will be able to stay in her post.
‘The difference between life and death in Saturday’s attempted assassination of former President Trump was centimeters and a slight wind,’ he said on X.
And as fury mounts, he says it is not a question of if Cheatle resigns, but when.