Washington. US Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has said that the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump is the biggest ‘mistake’ of the agency in decades. During her appearance in Parliament on Monday, she told the lawmakers, “We made a mistake on July 13.” She said that she takes full responsibility for the agency’s mistake in the attack on Trump in Pennsylvania earlier this month.
During the rally, a 20-year-old youth shot at Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, in an attempt to kill him. There is a demand for Cheatle’s resignation over security lapses in this case. A young man named Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed onto the roof of a nearby building and fired a shot that hit Trump’s ear, while two other attendees were injured in the firing.
Lawmakers are surprised at how the gunman got so close to Trump. Home Minister Alejandro Mayorkas has called the incident a ‘lapse’, while many lawmakers have demanded that Cheatle resign or be fired by President Joe Biden. The intelligence service has said that Cheatle does not want to resign. So far, she has the support of Democratic Party leaders Biden and Mayorkas.
Immediately after the attack, the law enforcement agency denied that it had rejected requests for increased security. But the Secret Service admitted late Saturday night, a week after Trump’s assassination attempt, that it had rejected some requests to increase security at the former president’s events.
“The Secret Service’s mission is complex. Every day we work in a threat environment to ensure that our people remain safe during a variety of events, travel and other challenging environments,” the agency’s chief spokesman Anthony Gugliemi said in a statement released to The Washington Post late Saturday night.
Tags: Donald Trump, Joe Biden
FIRST PUBLISHED : July 22, 2024, 22:31 IST