Secret Service director has ludicrous reason the shooter’s roof was not secured
Secret Service chief Kimberly Cheatle has been busy defending her agency, and rejecting calls for her to resign, in the wake of Saturday’s attempted assassination that left President Donald Trump injured.
The gunman, 20, now dead, fired at Trump from the roof of a building about 120 yards away.
Cheatle said, during an interview, the building was secured from the “inside” because of its roof, which provided the gunman with a clear line of sight to Trump.
“That building, in particular, has a sloped roof at its highest point,” she said in the interview with ABC. “And so there will be a safety factor that will be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so you know the decision was made to secure the building from the inside.”
“That’s crap,” said former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich at the Republican National Convention Tuesday night.
There are a number of circumstances that undoubtedly will need to be reviewed, including her decision not to send an agent to the roof of a building overlooking a Trump rally because of the slope of that roof, a slope that the gunman apparently had no difficulty traversing.
Other questions arise from a ladder and ammunition the gunman bought just before the shooting, and how he got the ladder up against a building to reach the roof.
There are other concerns, too.
A commentary at the Western Journal, for example, cited her repeated remarks that it was only a “short” time between notification of a potential gunman and the shots, which killed one Trump supporter who was protecting his family and injured two more.
“Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is a woman who has a lot to explain, and it turns out she’s not very good at explaining it,” the commentary said.
“Cheatle’s record came under scrutiny almost immediately after the attack, with conservative activist Mike Cernovich noting Saturday that her profile on the government’s website emphasized diversity and noted that her prior experience, before becoming the 27th director of Secret Service, was senior director of global security at PepsiCo.”
Trump credited God’s intervention with saving his life, as he was struck in the ear a millisecond after he turned his head. Without that move, he may have been struck directly in the head.
So how was a 20-year-old able to get within firing range of Trump while the Secret Service agents were supposed to be securing the location, and local police were helping.
“Diversity,” the commentary charged, “has not managed to save a single person under the Secret Service’s protection, at least that we know about, which makes the prominence given to that word just a little bit odd. And the fact that it makes it look like Cheatle was a diversity hire isn’t her only issue…”
It pointed out that it was 26 minutes that elapsed after the shooting initially was spotted, and audience members contacted police about a man on the roof of the building, until he fired a barrage at Trump and immediately was shot and killed by officers.
Cheatle said that time period of nearly half an hour is “a very short period of time.”
It was WPXI-TV of Pittsburgh that confirmed the gunman was seen by law enforcement nearly half an hour before shots were fired.
One source cited in the commentary said a suspicious man was reported at 5:45 p.m. Shots rang out at 6:11.
The report explained, “26 minutes after the second picture of Crooks was taken by law enforcement and the information called in, shots were fired from the roof of the American Glass Research building. Seconds later, a Secret Service sniper returned fire and killed Crooks.”
The commentary also noted that “thankfully” Cheatle said it was an event “that should have never happened.”
It’s not the first failure on the part of the Secret Service in recent weeks. A woman agent apparently had to be physically restrained, disarmed and handcuffed after she had “an apparent mental health breakdown” while assigned to guard Kamala Harris.
ABC reported Cheatle expressed her opinion that such shootings are “unacceptable.”
And, she said, it “shouldn’t happen again.”
She also excused her own agency as “local authorities were tasked with securing the building where the alleged shooter fired the shots.”
“We sought assistance from our local counterparts for the outer perimeter. There was local police in that building — there was local police in the area that were responsible for the outer perimeter of the building,” she said.
She also claimed that the Secret Service “is not political.”
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