MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was on Capitol Hill yesterday.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Yeah, for nearly 5 hours, she faced questions from House lawmakers demanding answers about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
MARTIN: NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas watched yesterday's hearing, and he's with us now to tell us about it. Good morning, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: You know, the Secret Service has been under a very uncomfortable spotlight since the shooting at that Trump rally in Butler, Penn. You know, a bystander was killed, and, of course, we all know, the former president was wounded. So what did the director have to say about what happened there?
LUCAS: Well, Cheatle called the assassination attempt on 13 July the most significant operational failure for the Secret Service in decades. And she also said this.
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KIMBERLY CHEATLE: The Secret Service's solemn mission is to protect our nation's leaders. On July 13, we failed. As a director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse of our agency.
LUCAS: She also said that she will move heaven and Earth to make sure that nothing like July 13 happens again, and that the Secret Service is cooperating with the multiple ongoing investigations underway and conducting its own review of what went wrong.
MARTIN: Have we learned anything new about what happened?
LUCAS: In this hearing, lawmakers certainly didn't think so. This was nearly 5 hours. It was contentious much of the time. Here's how the committee's Republican chairman James Comer summed it up at the end.
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JAMES COMER: The American people have questions. They deserve answers. Congress deserves answers. You were subpoenaed today to provide answers, and ma'am, you did not do that.
LUCAS: One of the main questions coming into this hearing was how the gunman was able to get up on a roof that gave him a clear line of sight on Trump at the rally and Republicans and Democrats, one after another, pressed her for an answer on that. And time and again, she gave a version of this answer.
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CHEATLE: We are nine days out from this event, and I would like to know those answers as well, which is why we are going through these investigations to be able to determine that fully.
LUCAS: That was her answer on the big basic questions. She did confirm some small details. But again, nothing that would change our understanding of what happened and what went wrong.
MARTIN: OK, well, what sort of details did she confirm?
LUCAS: Well, she said the shooter had been flagged as a suspicious individual before Trump went on stage. She said law enforcement officers at the rally were trying to track him down. But she also said it's not rare for someone to be flagged as suspicious at an event like this, and she differentiated between suspicious and being identified as a threat. She also said that the Secret Service did not know that the shooter had a gun before Trump went out to speak, and if they had known, Trump wouldn't have been allowed out on that stage. But again, as I said, these are smaller things, and on the big questions, there was a lot of frustration from lawmakers that she wasn't providing the answers they wanted.
MARTIN: OK, so even given the performative nature of a lot of congressional hearings that we've all seen, both Republicans and Democrats have expressed frustration about this. So is Cheatle going to remain in charge of the Secret Service, given that this is a - kind of a bipartisan outrage here?
LUCAS: That's a really good question. She said at the hearing that she believes she's the best person for the job and she's going to stay put, but pressure is definitely growing for her to step down. There were already calls, as you noted, for her to resign before this hearing. And during the hearing, several lawmakers from both sides of the aisle - that includes the committee's top Republican and the top Democrat - told her point blank that they think she's lost the public's confidence, and she needs to go. And then last night, a motion was filed in the House to impeach Cheatle. It's a motion that forces a vote within 48 hours. So the pressure on her to step aside is only growing.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Ryan Lucas. Ryan, thank you.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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