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Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle will not have her top-level security clearance renewed, the agency said.
This comes after Cheatle resigned last year amid mounting scrutiny over security lapses that led to the assassination attempt against then-candidate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Trump survived an assassination attempt during the July 13, 2024, rally, suffering an injury to his ear after a bullet grazed him, while audience member Corey Comperatore was killed and two others in the crowd were wounded. A Secret Service sniper fatally shot the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who had climbed to the top of a nearby building.
The Secret Service, as well as several top U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and FBI, regularly update the security clearances for former directors. But the Secret Service now says not all former directors will have their clearances renewed under current Director Sean Curran.
“The U.S. Secret Service sponsors security clearances for all the former directors for their knowledge of operational and national security matters,” a Secret Service spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News. “The purpose for this was so the agency could maintain formal and protected communication including potentially sensitive and classified matters with former officials.”
“Since appointed, Director Curran has been building a dynamic team of knowledgeable advisors that will help implement his vision for the agency,” the spokesperson continued. “Additionally, Director Curran has been modernizing the intelligence apparatus within the agency. During that process, he has determined that not all former directors will have their clearances renewed.”
The move not to renew Cheatle’s security clearance comes as some Republican lawmakers were voicing opposition to a potential renewal, including Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., who argued that her leadership decisions contributed to the agency’s numerous failures surrounding the assassination attempt against Trump.
“Following the security debacle in Butler, the former director of USSS made the right decision to resign,” Johnson said in a statement to RealClearPolitics. “I see no reason for her security clearance to be reinstated.”
Johnson, who chairs the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, had probed the Secret Service’s failures leading up to the assassination attempt in Butler.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee that conducted a joint investigation with a Homeland Security panel into the lapses in Butler, said the agency’s failures should prevent her from holding a security clearance.
“Kim Cheatle disgraced the Secret Service by failing to prevent a horrifying attempt on President Trump’s life,” Blackburn said in a statement to RealClearPolitics. “Not only did she oversee one of the greatest security failures in our nation’s history, but she also stonewalled congressional oversight and ran away from my colleagues and me when we confronted her. Under no circumstances should she be allowed to regain her security clearance, and it is shameful she would even try.”
Cheatle resigned as director 10 days after the shooting in Butler, as she was facing intense pressure from Republicans over the security failures.
“To the Men and Women of the U.S. Secret Service, The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders and financial infrastructure,” Cheatle wrote in a letter to the agency at the time. “On July 13th, we fell short on that mission.”
“As your Director, I take full responsibility for the security lapse,” she added.
On the first anniversary of the assassination attempt, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, accused her of lying in her testimony to Congress in the aftermath of the shooting when she denied accusations she turned down requests for more resources for Trump’s security.
The former director pushed back on Paul’s allegations.
“Any assertion or implication that I provided misleading testimony is patently false and does a disservice to those men and women on the front lines who have been unfairly disciplined for a team, rather than individual, failure,” she responded in a statement provided by her attorney.
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