Rep. McClain Brings Straight Fire to Kim Cheatle, 'What Are You Covering Up?'

I think the clock has to be ticking down on Secret Service head Kim Cheatle's time in her job.

The hearing on Monday, which took about five hours, was wild, with representatives on both sides of the aisle trying to get answers from her. Democrats, including Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi, Ro Khanna, and even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked good questions. But Cheatle didn't do anything to help herself. In fact, her recalcitrance to answer even the most basic questions that they asked her made everything worse. By the end, they were even angrier at her failure to provide information than at the beginning.

Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) declared that the Secret Service has a leadership problem, and she wasn't buying Cheatle's "hollow words." The best way to keep your job is to answer the questions, McClain said. She noted that Cheatle wouldn't even answer when she started preparing for the hearing. One has to wonder if she did any preparation at all since she didn't seem to know any answers.

🚨 REP. MCCLAIN: “It’s not you don’t know. It’s not you can’t. It’s you won’t answer the questions!”

NOT A SINGLE ONE! pic.twitter.com/7WzyAU67de
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 22, 2024

McClain excoriated Cheatle's deflection of everything to the FBI, not even answering questions about the basic event preparation, which isn't about the FBI investigation but about the Secret Service's preparation. McClain asked her who should they talk to at the FBI, "wait for it, wait for it."

Cheatle then responded that she was "not certain." That understandably upset McClain.

But McClain in her cross-examination of Cheatle managed to get her to admit that the FBI knew how many shell casings were on the roof, but she, Cheatle, just wasn't going to tell the Committee. "What is the answer to that question?" McClain demanded. "What are you covering up, what are you hiding, my friend?"

Cheatle insisted she wasn't covering anything up.

McClain said it's not a "can't" answer, it's a "wouldn't," and if she wouldn't answer to the American people, she should step aside for someone who would.

Now that was great work. The next thing they need to do is demand answers from the Biden administration, call for Cheatle to be fired and immediate changes be made to the way they're protecting people if they don't want such a thing to happen again. The hearing revealed all kinds of failures in the way they handle things. If you're providing more coverage for Jill Biden at an indoor dinner in Pittsburgh than at an outdoor rally for Trump -- who's been threatened and was holding an event with thousands of attendees -- something is very wrong in how you are assessing things. And it raises big questions about whether they simply didn't care about protecting Trump, especially given that prior requests for resources were turned down.

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