Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Resigns After Trump Shooting | TMZ Live
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is throwing in the towel on her job at the federal agency -- this after the bungled attempted assassination of Donald Trump ... and all the scrutiny that's followed, TMZ has confirmed.
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00:00The move that everyone expected to see in D.C.
00:04The director of the Secret Service, Kim Cheadle, resigned,
00:09stepping down after getting grilled in Congress.
00:14Bipartisan grilling.
00:16Bipartisan grilling, and not really having any answers,
00:19which was the part that just made everyone go,
00:21Can I tell you, some of the answers seemed deceptive to me.
00:24Yeah.
00:25Because there's no way she doesn't know ten days after
00:28that she didn't have some of those answers.
00:29She didn't have details, or if she did, she wasn't sharing them.
00:32But I got to tell you, I mean, we're doing a documentary
00:35on all the failures here, but it is stunning, stunning,
00:40that, you know, one of the people we interviewed
00:43is a guy 30 seconds before the shooting.
00:46For two minutes before the shooting, people saw the guy on the roof.
00:49But 30 seconds before he started firing,
00:52this guy saw him with a rifle, is pointing up at the guy,
00:57and then pointing at the sharpshooters behind Trump,
01:00saying, he's over here with a gun, screaming it.
01:0375 people are scattering.
01:06And not only did they not take him out, take the shooter out,
01:10they didn't tell Trump, drop to the ground or jump him.
01:14It was such a crazy failure.
01:18It is, yeah, like you said, crazy.
01:22And even with Kim Cheadle stepping down,
01:25there are a lot of people in Congress, while she was actually,
01:28while she was being grilled on Capitol Hill,
01:31there was another congressman, Eli Crane,
01:33who actually went to Butler, Pennsylvania,
01:36and went to the site on a fact-finding mission,
01:39wanted to see some of the things that had been reported
01:41about what the Secret Service was saying.
01:44He actually climbed up on the roof of that building
01:48to check out the line of sight here.
01:50Keep in mind that Eli Crane is a retired Navy SEAL.
01:54Right.
01:55So he knows what he's dealing with here.
01:58But this is what he saw when he got on top of that building.
02:01All right, guys, I'm up here on the building
02:03where the supposed sniper took his shot.
02:09It's not that steep at all.
02:11I just had a 70-year-old man back here climb up on the roof easily.
02:16Behind me, can you see the windows?
02:20Secret Service was supposedly in the second floor of this building behind.
02:25Makes you wonder why they weren't able to quickly dispatch the individual.
02:31And then behind me, back over here where those red roofs are,
02:35that's where the stage was set up.
02:37That's where the president was giving his speech from.
02:40Total line of sight.
02:41Look at it.
02:42Total line of sight.
02:43It is as direct a line of sight as you can have.
02:45Total line of sight.
02:46147 yards, clear view.
02:49The sharpshooters are behind Trump.
02:50If he could see Trump, they could see him.
02:52Yeah, this is a comprehensive failure at every level of the Secret Service.
02:56Obviously, the director's paying the ultimate price for it.
02:58But there's some failures on the ground as well, it appears,
03:01to the points that you're making about the warnings, the lack of action,
03:04the not getting the former president on the ground.
03:07It's horrific.
03:08One of the things that really teed or angered the members of Congress
03:12was that the director said that they were going to work on some sort of a paper
03:17to determine what went wrong.
03:19It would be available in about 60 days.
03:21And the Congress people were like, what are you talking about?
03:23This should be an absolute, comprehensive, top-down, immediate review
03:28because we've got to make sure it just doesn't happen again.
03:30And based on what happened there,
03:32I don't know how safe you can really feel going forward
03:36if you're one of these high-profile targets.
03:38This is Aaron from the Bronx.
03:40In my lifetime, I don't think I've ever seen a more deserved resignation
03:45because you are literally the head of the Secret Service.
03:48It's almost like ruining a joke.
03:51When people talk about, oh, I'm going to see such-and-such
03:54who happens to be a political figure, you say to yourself,
03:56well, not with them Secret Service people around.
03:59Now it's people who think that aren't going to feel as threatened
04:02because the Secret Service couldn't stop a 20-year-old kid with an AR-15
04:06from getting to the top of a roof and taking a shot at a former president.
04:10Josh, this kid flew a drone.
04:13He flew a drone two hours before the rally.
04:16He flew a drone, and they didn't see it.
04:18I mean, it's great.
04:20It is mind-boggling what happened.