Watch live: Day 2 of Congressional hearings over the US Secret Service oversights in the attempted assassination of Donald Trump
Day 1 recap: Oversight of the U.S. Secret Service and the Attempted Assassination of President Donald J. Trump. Kim Cheatle is scheduled to speak before the Oversight committee in Congress in the US House of Representatives. At 10am ET in Washington DC, the director of the United States Secret Service Kim Cheatle will be questioned about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally last week in Butler, Pennsylvania. Thomas Matthew Crooks has been identified as the alleged shooter in the investigation. The hearing will center on apparent oversights and mistakes the Secret Service may have made in their protection of former President Trump at the campaign rally. The organization has faced fierce criticism for allowing the shooter to get so close into position before responding and taking him out.
The president of the Butler Farm Show – where former President Trump held his rally on Saturday when the assassination attempt unfolded – tells the New York Times that Secret Service agents first visited the site less than a week before the event.
Organizers for Trump’s campaign asked to use the site in Butler on July 3 before Secret Service agents showed up to scan the area on July 8, Ken Laughlin said to the newspaper.
“It just seemed like an awful quick turn around,” he said.
Trump’s rally was supposed to be held at the Butler County Airport — but the airport was already booked out for July 13 for the Penn Township Volunteer Fire Company’s annual Mega Cruise car show, according to Stephanie Saracco, the Butler County Airport Manager.
Trump held a rally at the airport on October 31, 2020 as President.
Former Department of Defense counterterrorism analyst Kara Frederick said on the ‘The Faulkner Focus’ Friday that the House hearing next week with the Secret Service’s director “should give us a lot of answers” surrounding the investigation of Trump rally shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks.
The House Oversight Committe is set to question Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Monday.
The hearing comes after Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., said members of Congress were told this week that Crooks had three encrypted accounts on overseas platforms.
“As something I did for almost ten years with the government and then with a big tech company, what you do is you can extract data from these platforms,” Frederick said. “You can figure out who were these platforms that he was supposedly using – even if they were encrypted – who was he talking to, what are his IP addresses, can you geolocate him to those physical locations… was he using aliases?”
“There are people who are in the government – even who are outside of the government – who can work to exploit that information that those accounts would convey,” she added.
The House Committee On Oversight and Accountability has scheduled a hearing for Monday with Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who is facing criticism and calls to resign from lawmakers over her agency’s handling of the Trump rally shooting last weekend in Pennsylvania.
The hearing, titled “Oversight of the U.S. Secret Service and the Attempted Assassination of President Donald J. Trump,” is set to unfold on Capitol Hill beginning at 10 a.m. ET Monday.
Cheatle is refusing to resign, but House Speaker Mike Johnston told FOX Business on Thursday that he is prepared to call on President Biden to fire her.
“Continuity of operations is paramount during a critical incident and U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has no intentions to step down. She deeply respects members of Congress and is fiercely committed to transparency in leading the Secret Service through the internal investigation and strengthening the agency through lessons learned in these important internal and external reviews,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement late Wednesday.
Cheatle was confronted by senators who were demanding answers when she showed up at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week.
Subscribe to LiveNOW from FOX! https://www.youtube.com/livenowfox?su…
Where to watch LiveNOW from FOX: https://www.livenowfox.com/
Follow us @LiveNOWFOX on Twitter: https://twitter.com/livenowfox
Raw and unfiltered. Watch a non-stop stream of breaking news, live events and stories across the nation. Limited commentary. No opinion. Experience LiveNOW from FOX.
source
