Speaker Johnson calls for Secret Service director’s resignation, promises task force

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday called for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign in wake of the attempted assassination of former President Trump.

Johnson also said he will create a congressional task force to consolidate investigations into the security failures around Trump’s Saturday rally that resulted in a 20-year-old gunman shooting and injuring the president, killing one attendee, and leaving two others in critical condition.

“I’m going to call for resignation as well,” Johnson said on Fox News when asked whether Cheatle should resign. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) had called for her resignation Tuesday.

“I think it’s inexcusable,” Johnson said. 

He referenced Cheatle in an ABC News interview when saying there were no law enforcement officers stationed on the roof from which the shooter fired because the “sloped roof” created safety concerns, despite other Secret Service snipers being positioned on a roof that was also sloped.

“It doesn’t wash, and I think she’s shown what her priorities are,” Johnson said. “I don’t know her personally, but we’ll be asking lots of questions.”

Cheatle also told ABC News she would not step down.

At least six committees across both chambers of Congress have been looking into the assassination attempt, with the various probes spurring tension with the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Johnson said the creation of a task force in the House will streamline the investigations.

“We’re going to move quickly. I’ll be setting up, on Monday, a task force, a special task force within the House,” Johnson said. “And the reason we’re going to do it that way, is because that is a more of a precision strike.”

The task force will not have so many “procedural hurdles” but will have “subpoena authority,” Johnson said, and will include both Republicans and Democrats.

Johnson said he has spoken with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, leaders at the FBI and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. 

“There’s real questions, let’s just put it that way,” Johnson said. “The answers have not been forthcoming. I think they’re gathering data; we’re going to do it as well. We have to have accountability for this. It was inexcusable. Obviously, there were security lapses. You don’t have to be a special-ops expert to understand that.”

Johnson’s announcement of a House task force to investigate the attack comes as the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and the Homeland Security panel are planning hearings with the Secret Service director next week and as tensions between the House GOP investigators and officials in the Secret Service and DHS have increased over the last several days.

An Oversight Committee spokesperson on Tuesday accused the Department of Homeland Security of “unprofessionalism” in the wake of a scheduled Secret Service briefing that later fell apart — and said the panel’s chair, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), will issue a subpoena to Cheatle to “head off any attempt by DHS to backtrack” on her agreed-upon appearance at a Monday hearing.

“We’re hearing rumblings this morning that Mayorkas may not allow her to attend” the hearings, Johnson said Wednesday on Fox.

Johnson said he has been talking to Comer and Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) about the task force, and that both will be “intimately involved.”

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) had first publicly pushed for an independent commission to examine the assassination attempt on Sunday.

Though there was some frustration about the canceled committee-level member briefings from earlier this week, House members will get more information Wednesday. The Department of Justice and DHS will host an afternoon briefing for all House members on the attempted assassination, according to a committee aide, with briefers including Secret Service Deputy Director Ronald Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate.

Updated at 11:58 a.m EDT