‘She did exactly what departments under Joe Biden are supposed to do, focus more on DEI than the mission,’ Sen. Johnson said.
President Joe Biden has just fired himself from the 2024 presidential campaign, but he can’t bring himself to let go the U.S. Secret Service chief whose agency allowed a would-be assassin to climb up onto a sloped roof and nearly take out the GOP’s presidential candidate.
Now, the first House Democrat has called on Kimberly Cheatle to resign amid revelations of more Secret Service failures leading up to and during the attack on former President Donald Trump and others at the July 13 campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told The Federalist that the embattled Secret Service director hadn’t failed by the Biden administration’s standards.
“She did exactly what departments and agencies under Joe Biden are supposed to do, focus more on diversity, equity, and inclusion than the mission of their departments and agencies,” Johnson said in a phone interview with The Federalist Sunday afternoon. “That’s why we have guys wearing dresses and stealing women’s luggage in airports so they can get a new wardrobe.”
Damning Evidence
On Sunday, Johnson, the former chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, released preliminary findings about last weekend’s assassination attempt. He said his office — immediately after the shootings that wounded Trump and two others and killed another — began reaching out to federal, state, and local government entities and private companies “seeking information about the security failures at the rally.”
Johnson said his office is sharing the findings thus far in the spirit of transparency and to ensure the various investigators looking into the assassination attempt are privy to the information. The report finds:
Secret Service did not attend a security briefing provided to local special weapons and tactics (SWAT) and sniper teams the morning of July 13, 2024;
Local law enforcement said communications were siloed and they were not in frequent radio contact directly with Secret Service;
Local law enforcement notified command about [shooter Thomas Matthew] Crooks prior to the shooting and received confirmation that Secret Service was aware of the notification;
Following the shooting Secret Service was seen on the roof of the American Glass Research (AGR) building with local law enforcement; photos of the shooter were sent to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for facial recognition; and
Secret Service was initially not going to send snipers to the rally, according to local law enforcement.