Facing increasing calls for her resignation, Kimberly A. Cheatle, the Secret Service director, is scheduled to appear on Capitol Hill on Monday to face what is likely to be intense questioning over her agency’s failures after a would-be assassin wounded former President Donald J. Trump.
Ms. Cheatle will appear before the House oversight committee at 10 a.m., as congressional committees ramp up their investigations into law enforcement missteps before, during and after the shooting this month at a rally in Butler, Pa. Mr. Trump and two attendees were injured in the attack, and another spectator was killed.
She intends to take “full responsibility” for security lapses, according to an excerpt from her testimony.
“The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13, we failed,” Ms. Cheatle plans to say, adding: “We must learn what happened and I will move heaven and earth to ensure an incident like July 13 does not happen again. Thinking about what we should have done differently is never far from my thoughts.”
Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the oversight committee, plans to call the shooting “preventable,” according to a copy of his prepared remarks.
“The Secret Service has a zero-fail mission, but it failed on July 13 and in the days leading up to the rally,” he intends to say. “The Secret Service has thousands of employees and a significant budget, but it has now become the face of incompetence.”
Mr. Comer plans to tell Ms. Cheatle directly: “It is my firm belief, Director Cheatle, that you should resign.”
Also on Monday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers from the House Committee on Homeland Security is scheduled to visit the site of the shooting in Butler as part of its own investigation. The panel is holding a hearing on Tuesday and has issued a subpoena to Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, for documents and information regarding the failed security efforts. His department oversees the Secret Service.
In recent days, new information has come out about law enforcement failures, including how the gunman got within about 450 feet of the former president with a clear line of fire at him.
The Secret Service acknowledged on Saturday that it had turned down requests for additional federal resources sought by Mr. Trump’s security detail in the two years leading up to his attempted assassination, a reversal from earlier statements by the agency denying that such requests had been rebuffed. The service says that it did not turn down such a request for the Butler rally.
The Secret Service had already been barraged with questions over why it had excluded from its security zone the warehouse from which the would-be assassin had fired at Mr. Trump. The service has also faced scrutiny over the way it assigned local law enforcement officers to assist with security at the rally. The agency tasked a sizable contingent of local law enforcement officers with working inside its security perimeter, rather than covering the building where the shooter ended up.
And Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and a member of the oversight committee, said that he had received information that the Secret Service had been stretched thin because of “limited resources” from covering the Trump rally and a visit by Jill Biden, the first lady, to Pittsburgh on the same day, as well as the NATO summit in Washington in the preceding week. The Secret Service has said it called in additional local and state law enforcement resources to help out in Butler.
During a briefing with senators last week, officials ran through a timeline of events, noting that law enforcement officers had identified the gunman as suspicious about an hour before the shooting but then lost track of him.
“Americans demand answers, but they have not been getting them from the Secret Service,” Mr. Comer plans to say. “We are instead learning about new facts about the events surrounding the attempted assassination every day from whistle-blowers and leaks. Americans demand accountability, but no one has yet to be fired for this historic failure.”
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