Trump: US Secret Service Chief, Kimberly Cheatle, resigns

US Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday, a day after she acknowledged that the agency failed in its mission to prevent the assassination attempt against the Republican Party Presidential Candidate, Donald Trump.

Cheatle faced bipartisan calls to step down after a 20-year-old gunman wounded the Republican presidential candidate at a July 13 campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

The Associated Press news agency said Kimberly Cheatle sent an email to staff on Tuesday announcing her plans to step down.

“I take full responsibility for the security lapse,” Cheatle said in the email to staff. “In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your director.”

The Secret Service chief had faced angry question during a US congressional committee hearing on Monday over the agency’s security plan at the Trump rally.

“There clearly was a mistake and we will make every effort to make sure that this never happens again,” she said.

Trump was shot in the ear by a gunman that witnesses say had taken up a position on a rooftop with a direct line of sight of the rally stage, raising questions about what security measures were put in place before the event.

US President Joe Biden had ordered an independent review of security protocols at the rally, where one attendee was killed and two others were seriously injured.

But lawmakers had been pushing for more immediate answers from Cheatle and other US law enforcement agency chiefs, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Tuesday morning that Cheatle’s resignation was “overdue”.

“Now we have to pick up the pieces; we have to rebuild the American peoples’ trust and trust in the Secret Service as an agency. It has an incredibly important responsibility in protecting presidents, former presidents and other officials in the executive branch,” Johnson said.

“And we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

In a statement after news of Cheatle’s resignation broke, Biden thanked the Secret Service director for her decades of public service and said he planned to appoint her replacement soon.

“The independent review to get to the bottom of what happened on July 13 continues, and I look forward to assessing its conclusions. We all know what happened that day can never happen again,” Biden said.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies