Democratic Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz slammed former U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle during a press conference Monday, calling it “outrageous” that she never visited the site where former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated.
After the assassination attempt on Trump on July 13, House lawmakers voted to establish a bipartisan task force just over a week later due to numerous reports of Secret Service’s security lapses. As the task force visited the Pennsylvania rally site Monday, Moskowitz condemned Cheatle, emphasizing how voters were “inches away from an American catastrophe” if Trump had been killed. (RELATED: RFK Jr. Loses Secret Service Protection, Agency Confirms)
“Thank you for bringing us here today as Democrats and Republicans, as members of the task force and as Americans,” Moskowitz said. “Being here and seeing the proximity of the buildings, it reminds me quite frankly how outrageous it was that the former director of Secret Service did not come here to get a sense of what this looked like. So we are working in a bipartisan nature.”
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“As a former director of emergency management for the state of Florida, I look forward to getting the facts of what failed that day. We were inches away from an American catastrophe. And then figuring out what steps we can take to make sure something like this never happens again,” Moskowitz said.
House lawmakers unanimously passed resolution H.R. 1367 on July 24, establishing a bipartisan task force of seven Republicans and six Democrats to investigate the security failures that allowed 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks to fire multiple rounds into Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. During the attack, Crooks positioned himself on a rooftop just 130 yards from the stage and was reportedly spotted multiple times by local law enforcement and witnesses.
Days after the attack, Cheatle told the House Oversight Committee that she had not visited the site and had only spoken to agents who protected the former president the day after the incident. Following the hearing with lawmakers, Cheatle announced her resignation on July 23.
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