The House Oversight and Accountability Committee needs to grill Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to understand exactly how the agency failed to prevent a would-be assassin from wounding Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump earlier this month, Rep. Jake LaTurner told Newsmax on Monday.
The Kansas Republican, who heads the committee, told "Wake Up America" that "we are going to ask [Cheatle] a lot of pointed questions today."
LaTurner stressed that "we need to nail down a time line, we need to nail down exactly who is responsible for this happening. We have to hold them accountable, and we have to put policies in place to make sure that this never happens again."
He added that "it is completely unacceptable [and] the director of the Secret Service is wholly responsible for this."
LaTurner said that he particularly wants to know "how does the Beaver County Emergency Management have a photograph of the shooter 18 minutes before President Trump even takes the stage. She should answer for that. And I want to know about the perimeter, was that within the Secret Service's polices or was a mistake made on the ground due to a lack of resources given to President Trump?"
LaTurner emphasized that Cheatle "should absolutely resign," because "the buck stops with her" and she has completely lost any confidence "the American people might have had with her in the first place" due to her mistakes.
He said "this was a tragedy, and the largest failure of the Secret Service in over 40 years, and the American people have to have answers to this."
Asked for his reaction to President Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential election, LaTurner said "this is something that a lot of us saw coming. Anyone who saw the debate performance a couple of weeks ago ... and those of us watching this administration for the last couple of years knew ... that President Biden was not up to the task."
But the congressman stressed that "the crux of this campaign form the beginning was talking about the terrible policies of the administration — the record high inflation, a world on fire because of a lack of American leadership, a wide open southern border."
LaTurner said that "Biden's incompetence was a distraction, those polices are what is actually affecting Americans' lives in a negative way, and [Vice President and presumptive Democrat nominee] Kamala Harris is squarely responsible for them just as Joe Biden is."
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