The director of the Secret Service says she has no
plans to step down following the assassination attempt on former
President Trump.
The agency released a statement yesterday saying Kimberly Cheadle is
fiercely committed to transparency during the agency's internal investigation.
The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed Cheadle seeking testimony from
her on Monday, but the Secret Service tells NBC News
her schedule will not allow her to appear and they're
working with the committee on an alternate date.
Let's bring in NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken
Delaney.
And, Ken, good morning.
It was interesting in his speech early on last night,
former President Trump went out of his way to praise
the Secret Service and its response anyway to the shooting.
We've talked about that a lot over the last week
or so.
What more can you tell us about the investigation this
morning?
Good morning, Willie.
Yeah.
Well, President Trump, former President Trump was praising the Secret
Service.
There are reports that behind the scenes, his campaign is
growing increasingly annoyed with them.
And you even saw public calls by some of his
campaign officials for the resignation of the Secret Service director.
And, of course, we all saw that video of those
Republican senators chasing her down at the Republican National Convention,
yelling questions at her that she was refusing to answer.
So that's never good when you're a federal official.
In terms of the investigation, You know, we're almost a
week later and the motives of this 20 year old
shooter remain an enigma.
And that's really the most perplexing thing about this.
The FBI has been through his phone and his devices
and they're no closer to figuring out why he did
this.
They found photos of both President Biden, former President Trump
on his phone and also Merrick Garland, the attorney general.
But they really, he has so little in the way
of both public and private postings.
One of the theories going around is that he was
simply an alienated young man looking for notoriety, that there
was number political motive here whatsoever.
And then in terms of the timeline, we're learning a
lot more and it's very troubling.
We learned from that congressional briefing that it was almost
an hour before the shooting that police first flagged Thomas
Crooks as a suspicious person near the magnetometers.
And then 1/2 hour before the shooting, they actually sent
a picture of him to the Secret Service.
And then 20 minutes before the shooting, we're told Secret
Service snipers on the roof on that roof of behind
the Trump rally detected Crooks on the roof of that
building, unclear at that time whether they viewed him as
a threat.
And then, of course, we know that at some point,
local police confronted him on the roof and then flagged
that there was a man with a gun.
What we don't know, the big question yet unanswered, is
how many seconds elapsed between that report over the radio
guy on the roof with a gun and the the
time that he fired the shots at Mr.
Trump?
Because that's a crucial question.
Did the Secret Service have time to pull him off
the stage?
It's unclear.
But we do know that they knew he had a
range Finder.
They knew there was a suspicious person out there with
a range Finder, and they still allowed Mr.
Trump to take the stage.
So there's a lot of questions about that.
There's also questions about how the Secret Service acted after
the shots were fired, guys, Right?
Yeah.
And I wanted to talk to you about that, Ken,
But but, but still, though the failure to secure the
roof is as you were talking about, as we've said
all along, the failure to notify any, you know, in
a in an aggressive way, the fears of a suspicious
person.
Well before President Trump took this stage.
The the, the range Finder that they saw again, how,
how they didn't immediately get the Secret Service around there
is beyond me.
But then something that you wrote about yesterday and and
we've talked about on this show, the amount of time
that it took to get President Trump off the stage
after he was shot.
I mean, this is, this remains to me, just an
enduring outrage that they didn't immediately grab him and pull
him off the stage.
That's what they're taught to do, isn't it?
Absolutely.
Joe, you were one of the first people to flag
this because a lot of people thought, well, they acted
heroically after the shots were fired.
And they did in the sense that they, these Secret
Service agents rushed into the line of gunfire to cover
up Donald Trump.
Most experts I talk to praise those initial seconds, but
then after that, they are appalled just as you are
about what happened because they, Mr.
Trump, they allowed the protectee to dictate the pace with
which they got him off the stage.
That is not what they are trained to do.
They're trained to manhandle, to tackle, to pick up the
principal and rush him to safety regardless of what he
wants.
And we talked to both former Secret Service agents and
then outside experts in close protection, people who've worked with
the State Department and the British military.
They were all flabbergasted that first of all, you hear
Mr.
Trump saying I need to get my shoes and they
slow down.
And then they they appeared to try to be hustling
him off the stage.
And by the way, at that point, as you noted
earlier, Joe, his head was above their head.
So he was in danger if there was a second
shooter, he was exposed to fire.
And then you hear Mr.
Trump say, wait, wait, wait.
And then he pumps his first at the crowd in
a in a gesture of showmanship.
That was a brilliant political move.
But if there had been a second shooter and remember,
they had intelligence that the Iranians are plotting to kill
Donald Trump and in retaliation for his his ordering of
a targeted killing of a general, if there had been
a second shooter, Mr.
Trump was exposed to that gunfire.
And we are just told that's not how it's supposed
to happen.
And what's perplexing to me is you, you're seeing retired
Secret Service agents defending that conduct, what my sources say
is indefensible.
NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delaney.
And thank you very much.
We'll be looking for more follow-ups on that.