Dan Bongino questions security measures following Trump assassination attempt – Washington Examiner

A former Secret Service agent says the agency’s head should resign immediately for her “apocalyptic security failure” after former President Donald Trump narrowly escaped assassination. 

As the Secret Service defends its security protocol at the Pennsylvania rally where a shooter opened fire on Trump, Dan Bongino is calling for Director Kimberly Cheatle to step down. 

Bongino served in the Secret Service for 12 years. The podcast host responded to a statement the agency put out following the assassination attempt claiming it had “added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo.” 

The former Secret Service agent slammed the agency’s refusal to own responsibility for the security breach.

“This is the best technology we have’? Really? To let a sniper 150 yards away from the potential next president shoot a piece of his ear off?” Bongino told Fox News. “Kimberly Cheatle has failed Donald Trump, and honestly failed Joe Biden too” 

U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle speaks during a Republican National Convention security news conference Thursday, June 6, 2024, in Milwaukee. At left is FBI special agent Michael Hensle. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Questions are mounting over how the shooter was able to gain access to a rooftop 150 yards from the president’s podium on Saturday evening. Witnesses say they tried to warn the Secret Service detail and police officers present at the event for minutes before Thomas Matthew Crooks pulled the trigger. 

Bongino expressed surprise that Secret Service counter snipers failed to kill Crooks before he opened fire on the president. 

“We’re trained out to 1,000 yards in the Secret Service with the counter-sniper team. How did they miss someone at most one-fifth of the way there? It doesn’t make any sense. And even worse, it’s broad daylight on a white roof.” 

While the Secret Service has emphatically denied reports that Trump’s security detail asked for, and were denied, reinforcements, Bongino says he can prove otherwise. “I can tell you actual quotes,” he said on Sunday. 

“I can tell you, and absolutely confirm, from the horse’s mouth, from multiple people … there have been repeated requests to increase the security footprint, around not just the residences of Donald Trump, but the body itself,” the former Secret Service agent said.  “And they have been rebuffed.” 

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is helped off the stage by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

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Bongino ended the Sunday morning interview on a somber note. “Never forget, an uneventful failure is never a success, and the fact that Donald Trump didn’t die yesterday is no reason for anybody to take some kind of victory lap,” he said. 

The FBI is now leading the investigation into Trump’s attempted assassination.

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