Insight about the moment can be found in conversations
The House Homeland Security Committee meets to investigate the site of the November 11 shooting in Los Alamos, California: A Democrat-Republican approach
The Homeland Security panel is led by a Democratic and Republican, and the congressional probes are led by a Republican. A bipartisan group of the House Homeland Security panel will pay a visit to the site of the shooting in person later today and discuss their findings after the tour.
Additional testimony from Cheatle and top FBI and Homeland Security officials have been called for by the committee chairman, Mark Green. Cheatle has not yet accepted the invitation.
Director Cheatle, I think it’s time to resign. However — in complete defiance — Director Cheatle has maintained she will not tender her resignation,” Comers said. “Therefore, she will answer questions today from Members of this Committee seeking to provide clarity to the American people about how these events were allowed to transpire. ”
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed to NPR that over a two-year period before the rally, at least a half dozen additional Trump security requests were denied by the agency.
Source: Secret Service chief to Congress: ‘We failed’
Summary of the Congressional Investigative Report on the Shooting of the Pittsburgh Shooting and the Security of a Protectee: Susan Napolitano, Fran Townsend, and David Mitchell
The panel includes Janet Napolitano, the Obama-era DHS secretary; Fran Townsend, the Homeland Security adviser to President George W. Bush; former federal Judge Mark Filip, who served as Bush’s deputy attorney general; and David Mitchell, the former superintendent of Maryland State Police and former Secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security for the State of Delaware. Other experts could be named to the panel in the coming days.
Mayorkas said that he was thankful to the members of the review who have decades of expertise in law enforcement and security operations.
Cheatle denied claims that the agency had denied Trump team requests for additional security.
Cheatle was summoned to appear before the House Oversight Committee after the shooting at the western Pennsylvania rally. She has never been called to testify before Congress before in her 29-year career in the Secret Service.
Cheatle told lawmakers the agency is fully cooperating with the FBI’s investigation, congressional oversight and conducting its own internal review. However, she was unable to answer most direct questions about the findings of her investigators, citing the ongoing nature of their work.
The hearing could last much of the day as people are expected to speak repeatedly about the concerns. There have been investigations of the shooting and the Secret Service.
“In some instances where specific Secret Service specialized units or resources were not provided, the agency made modifications to ensure the security of the protectee,” Guglielmi said in a statement to NPR. State and local partners may provide specialized functions or alternatives to reduce public exposure of a protectee.
This included several denied requests for magnetometers at public events, including a 2023 event in Michigan and Bronx County, N.Y., and Wildwood, N.J., rallies in May. The Secret Service also did not have countersniper teams available for a July 2023 rally in South Carolina, and the request was instead fulfilled by local law enforcement.
When President Biden and Congress met to Briefly Explain the Security of the Kabul Abroad Fiasco and Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial
Biden doesn’t like to fire people. counterprogramming to the man who was famous for saying “You’re fired!” But after the fiasco of the withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan, led to few repercussions, after months of a seemingly uncontrolled flow of migrants over the border, after concerns about inflation were pooh-poohed — and with promised investments in infrastructure only recently starting to be realized — questions were already being asked about overall government competence and accountability.
Despite the devotion millions of Americans feel toward Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and Obamacare, and despite the benefits of President Biden’s infrastructure deal, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act, the federal ogre has been a potent motivator for Republican campaigns.
One would have to dig meticulously through hours of testimony to find a straight answer she offered to any question. Nine days after the shooting, she could not explain why no officer or agent had been on the roof from which the gunman fired. She couldn’t say why that building wasn’t in the agency’s security perimeter. She could not explain why Alejandro Mayorkas denied that Trump’s aides requested more protection.
Both of the people were frustrated with her. Most police chiefs would agree with her that the prevalence of guns made her job more difficult.
Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee who prosecuted Trump’s second impeachment trial, called for her resignation.
The value Democrats and Republicans tend to place on the federal bureaucracy has been an essential dividing line between the two camps, even before Ronald Reagan’s inaugural incantation that “government is the problem.”
