Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has faced calls to resign in the aftermath of an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally on Saturday.
Cheatle, who previously worked as the senior director in Global Security for PepsiCo, has been the current director of the U.S. Secret Service since September 2022, according to the agency’s website. While working at PepsiCo, Cheatle reportedly was “responsible for directing and implementing security protocols for the company’s facilities in North America.”
The website also notes that before working at PepsiCo, Cheatle had served “for 27 years in the U.S. Secret Service”:
Before joining PepsiCo, she served with distinction for 27 years in the U.S. Secret Service, most recently as Assistant Director of the Office of Protective Operations. In this position, Ms. Cheatle manage a $133.5M budget and collaborated with ten operational divisions and the Technical Security Division to research, develop and deploy technologies that reduce risks to protectees, protected facilities, and protected events.
A witness told BBC News that he had seen a man with a rifle “bear-crawling” on top of the roof of a building close to the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I’m thinking to myself ‘Why is Trump still speaking, why have they not pulled him off the stage’… the next thing you know, five shots ring out,” the man told the outlet.
Minutes after taking the stage at the rally, gunshots rang out and Secret Service agents could be seen crowding around Trump, who was later seen with blood on his ear and the side of his face.
After being ushered away by the Secret Service, the former president later revealed that he had been “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part” of his right ear.
Several people have pointed out the security failings for a sniper to have come that close to being able to shoot Trump, and have criticized Cheatle.
“So before being put in charge of protecting the PRESIDENT, she was guarding bags of Cheetos,” Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk wrote in a post:
“I was the Sniper Employment Officer for my battalion and led hundreds of combat missions,” Blake Hall wrote in a post. “There were major security lapses in the security plan that allowed a shooter to engage President Trump from – 130 meters – an easy shot”:
“In a nation with the finest military, special forces, and security services the world has ever know, Biden appoints a female DEI hire from PepsiCo as the director of our Secret Service. Not a former Army Ranger, not a Navy SEAL, not even a longtime SS agent with decades of experience… a woman who did corporate security for PepsiCo,” New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R) wrote in a post.
Paladino added, “Purely appointments of wildly unqualified individuals like this have grave consequences for our nation, and today’s assassination attempt proves it. Get these people OUT of government”:
In an interview with CBS News in 2023, Cheatle said that one of her goals was for the agency to increase its female recruits to 30% by the year 2030.
House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) released a statement that his prayers were “with President Trump and the victims of the assassination attempt” at his rally and that he was “calling on” Cheatle to “appear for a hearing.”
