Cheatle Took A Political Bullet For Trump’s Secret Service Detail

I’ve been thinking for days about this, and the opinion I formed watching former Secret Service Director testify to Congress still holds: She did all she could to cover for her agency and in particular Trump’s Secret Service Detail (and to an extent state/local LE), to shield them from accountability. She was already catching hell, and had to know it would likely cost her her job. But she chose to obfuscate and withhold information she had by then. To give her agents time to “close ranks” and frankly, get their stories straight. In blunt, crass terms she took a political and career bullet for them, just like at one time she’d have taken a real bullet for a President or other protectee.

That’s right folks. I hadn’t known much about her but the first thing that jumped out at me was that Kimberly Cheatle wasn’t some person parachuted in from somewhere. In her opening statement she noted she’d come up through the ranks of the Secret Service.  If you check out the link you’ll find she was truthful. She started her career with them in 1995 in fact and served well over two decades in increasingly important roles. She left for a few years for the private sector, I presume for a much higher salary. However, when President Biden needed to appoint a new Director he turned to her and she accepted the job in 2022.

Let’s talk about a couple of things. In the wake of the JFK assassination the Secret Service transformed itself, or more precisely the part that provides protection for Presidents and other VIPs into more than a highly professional operation. They became the gold standard for such things. As part of the Dept. of the Treasury agents worked all over the country addressing their primary mission. Enforcing the security of our currency and especially identifying and prosecuting counterfeiters. In doing so individual agents or a pair of them HAD to work closely with other federal agencies of course, but more importantly with state and local LE. Establishing those state and especially local ties was part of the job – a crucial part and it provided an immeasurable asset crucial to those elevated to the Protective Details: an extensive network of LE contacts and a lot of goodwill. They knew who could be counted on and who couldn’t, and how to set up a coordinated security bubble with reliable communication between the various parts.

When DHS was formed the Secret Service was yanked from Treasury and placed there. Since then it’s been downhill with one scandal after another. As new agents came aboard they simply didn’t have the same level of experience working with state and local LE. I would write a great deal more about this but what matters is that a hard look at the last twenty years makes clear the Secret Service people think of, the one between the mid 1960s through the shift to DHS control simply isn’t at that level. And hasn’t been for some time. Despite some success in breaking up plots it’s actually frightening when you think about it. I for one can easily understand why any agent who’d put in their twenty years (or more) who was experienced in both the years as part of Treasury and the years as part of DHS would do what Cheatle did. With pension secured move to the private sector and beef up their bank accounts/retirement.

One didn’t need to hear from pundits with knowledge and expertise in what the Secret Service or any protective detail does to have known within 24 hours some serious failings had taken place. We all saw pictures and videos and asked the same questions. How could there NOT have been Secret Service or local LE on the rooftop the shooter used? Or the even higher one of the building just behind him? Captain Obvious would know to have that space covered! The next day we knew people including state and local LE saw the shooter and were suspicious. For at least an hour and perhaps two!  Worse, in the minutes before the shooting started and before Trump took the stage people were alerting local LE about this guy (the shooter) acting strangely and carrying something. BEFORE Trump got out of the car and headed to the stage, and then was seen climbing on to that roof. WHY didn’t the counter-sniper team have one rifle focusing on that rooftop? And why the hell didn’t Trump’s detail hustle him off the stage? (I also keep asking how the hell TWO purported SWAT snipers with all the training not each have their own spotter. Snipers work in teams of two – spotter and shooter!) After the shooting why was Trump allowed to keep sticking his head up?  He SHOULD have been completely protected – pushed over at the waist and hustled straight to the car.  That’s just for starters.

My point is that no one needed to be an expert to see replays and not be asking the same questions. Forget political feelings for or against Trump. Like I said it was patently obvious there were huge failures and of several different types.  I can assure you it will take not weeks but months to nail it all down and write the reports on the incident we’ll get from the Secret Service, their Inspector General, DHS, the FBI and of course Congress but the questions I posed and some others already had solid answers. Sometimes, at least in an open setting someone in Cheatle’s position can’t, or at least shouldn’t provide certain details. However, there was plenty she knew and could have said and she refused. We all knew she had some of the answers to some basic (hey, it was Congress after all) question being asked. All of us had been asking most if not all the same basic questions.

The hits keep coming. I read this article from Business Insider I read this morning is devastating.  It features comments from the head of the local SWAT on the lack of communication his snipers (and it seems others) had with Trump’s Secret Service detail:

“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened,” Jason Woods, a lead sharpshooter on the Beaver County, Pennsylvania SWAT team, told ABC News.

“So I think that was probably a pivotal point, where I started thinking things were wrong because it never happened,” he said. “We had no communication.”

In an interview published by ABC on Sunday, Woods and his team members said the first time they communicated with Secret Service agents on the ground was only after the shooting.

“It was too late,” Woods said

(Then) Director Cheatle had to have known things like that prior to appearing at that House hearing. Yet she chose to cover for Trump’s detail. If for no other reason than to buy them some time before they had to sit down for a string of interviews with investigators conducting a variety of inquiries.  Given they still have not just a Protectee but one who’s in the middle of a Presidential campaign it’s not practical to simply relieve them of duty for a couple of weeks. Why is a complicated thing I don’t want to bore you with. I will however say that the head of Trump’s detail SHOULD have been relieved immediately and sent to DC to start facing some tough questions. Same with the agents on Trump’s advance detail – the small team that visits places a candidate will appear to do a security assessment and identify state and local resources that will be needed. AND start the process of coordination between state/local with them (Trump’s detail) and each other.

It didn’t take me a week to come to the conclusion that while numerous screwups/failings occurred it all flowed from a single source. A falloff in the level of vigilance from what it should have been. If not an almost lax attitude, since it was a rally in a deeply Trump/Red county and area.  Simply not the same as the Secret Service was once noted for.

Cheatle took a “bullet” for Trump’s Secret Service detail. Do you think any of them will appreciate it? Or one day quietly thank her for giving them a chance to at least partially cover their a$$es? I think not.  These are after all agents who CHOSE to move with Trump to Florida when he grudgingly left the WH and moved down to Florida. They are butt kissing Trumpkins. The words in the oath all who hold federal office take are mere words they had to speak. The Constitution? Pffft. They are loyal to and will serve Trump and only Trump.

Just like their protectee they will throw ANYONE under the bus.  That includes the former Director of their agency Kimberly Cheatle who willfully sacrificed HER job and professional reputation (and future) to cover for THEM. If there’s any justice Kamala Harris will become our next President. Then, and maybe even before the new head of the Secret Service should inform Trump his entire detail will be relived of duty and ordered to DC for a Professional Standards review that will likely result in the dismissal of many, if not all of them. He will have at most a week to pick any other members from his time as President to replace him.

Given the fact that his would be assassin was a lousy shot, and that had the young man been even a moderately good shot he’d be dead with half his head blown off I’m surprised Trump wants any of his detail on the job at all.  Maybe given his attention span he can’t keep up with advisors who have spelled it out to him. That actually makes sense to me. Plus he’s got his mind on other things like trying to win the election so he stays out of jail. If he can focus on anything THAT would be it. Still, I can’t help but think the time might come when he realizes that whether he was nicked by shrapnel or an actual bullet he’s incredibly lucky to be alive.  AND that his life was needlessly endangered because his Secret Service detail was incompetent.

If it hasn’t been done for him he will take tremendous malevolent pleasure in calling them in one by one and issuing that signature line “Your Fired” to each and every one.  If I were any one of them I’d sneak any personal items out of my desk/workspace at Marmalade A GO or Bedminster because at some point they might well be hustled straight from Trump’s presence to outside the gate. There will be no ‘we’ll forward your personal stuff to you.’ Oh hell no. Trump will order it all packed up and either dumped out in the ocean or taken somewhere and burned!

And Kimberly Cheatle? She may or may not have weathered the whole mess. But she was loyal to the agency that shaped her life and to  her agents. At the expense of her career and future. Trump’s team wasn’t worthy of that sacrifice and I feel bad for Cheatle because if she doesn’t already know it the time will come when she will.