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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Monday demanded to know if the Secret Service was engaged in a “conspiracy to kill” former President Donald Trump when he was nearly assassinated earlier this month.
It was one of a number of conspiracy theories floated about the shooting during the House Oversight Committee’s questioning of Kimberly Cheatle, the Secret Service director who so far has said she will not resign despite the admitted massive security failure that allowed the 20-year-old shooter to take multiple shots at Trump with a semiautomatic rifle.
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Multiple members of Congress — including Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) — called for Cheatle to resign Monday.
“The people there knew that there was a danger, they knew there was a threat to President Trump, and it was allowed to happen,” Greene bellowed as the time expired on her questioning of the Secret Service director. “Was there a stand-down order, Ms. Cheatle? Was there a conspiracy to kill President Trump?!”
“No, absolutely not,” Cheatle responded.
Greene demanded to know why the director had not resigned and how the shooting was allowed to happen. “That is what we are investigating to determine,” Cheatle said.
There’s no evidence to support any claims that law enforcement participated in the assassination attempt. Greene’s wild question was one of several nods to conspiracy theories about the shooting throughout Monday’s hearing.
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In the week since the shooting — which created an extremely tense environment that experts warn could generate more political violence — several high-profile conservatives have floated unfounded, inflammatory theories. Eric Trump heavily implied in a Fox News appearance that Democrats were somehow behind the assassination attempt, and Donald Trump Jr. has repeatedly suggested that the shooter did not act alone.
“We need to know why he waited for multiple rounds to be fired at President Trump before the threat was neutralized,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) told Cheatle Monday, referring to the counter-sniper who killed the shooter moments after the shooting began. “We need to know if he was given an order to hold fire.”
There was no such order, Cheatle said, noting that Secret Service agents have the ability to neutralize threats when they see them.
Multiple Republican members of Congress referenced sexist online chatter that Trump’s Secret Service detail that day appeared to have multiple women in it, while his detail at the Republican National Convention was, as the right-wing Daily Caller put it, “the ‘A-Team’ of secret service who all happen to be males.”
Cheatle said that the agents assigned to Trump’s detail on the day of the shooting were part of his permanent, normal detail — and also that the former president has a massive team of security personnel assigned to him. The convention team may have just had different agents on shift, she said.
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Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) asked Cheatle if she was confident that the shooter was “the only person firing that day” at Trump. That echoed conspiracy theories, including one spread by the billionaire Trump supporter Bill Ackman, that there were multiple shooters — though no evidence has come out to support this notion.
“That is the information I have at this time, yes,” Cheatle told Perry.
Others appeared to splice evidence together to make the Secret Service’s work look even worse than reality.
For example, after Cheatle acknowledged that the shooter had been identified as a suspicious person before the shooting — but not necessarily a threat — Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) tore into her.
“Here you’ve got a guy scampering up the side of a building, on top of a roof, it’s identified to you, and you said you sent a team there.”
In fact, security teams had been sent to find the would-be assassin before he was spotted on the roof with a gun. However, once he was spotted on the roof with the gun and a concrete threat to Trump, it was too late: Shots rang out in Pennsylvania.
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Biggs submitted a long list of far-right media sources into the congressional record, including from the far-right media personality Matt Walsh, who claimed in an article and video that “The Official Story On Trump’s Shooting Makes No Sense At All.”
Yet Cheatle was also frustratingly short on details with the committee.
In response later in the hearing to questions from Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) about when Secret Service agents on the ground were made aware of the “active threat” against Trump, she said, “I don’t have a specific timeline.” Later, she said it was less than five minutes before the shooting, but did not specify further, saying there were a “number of reports.”
Responding to Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.) even later in the hearing, she said the shooter went from being considered “suspicious” to being a “threat” mere “seconds” before the shooting.
Multiple members of Congress pointed out that Cheatle’s refusal to answer questions — citing ongoing fact-gathering and investigation — could fuel further conspiracy theorizing.
“What would dispel some of the conspiracy theories out there, what would increase trust with the American people, is for you to let facts out — for you to tell us what you know,” Rep. Jake LaTurner (R-Kan.) pressed, noting that Cheatle had disclosed some investigatory details with the committee, but not others. “Why is that a problem?” (Cheatle had previously said that she wanted to be sure the information she was releasing was “consistent and factual.”)
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Later, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) noted that “unfortunately, another thing that is happening, because we’re not getting answers from you today, is the conspiracy theories. They have already begun.”
Crockett pointed out that if people believe that the shooting was the result of some sort of government conspiracy, “that potentially incites the next level of violence at the next event, in retaliation for this.” She urged Cheatle to release more information.
“So long as these conspiracy theories continue to fester, it is going to make your job that much harder,” she said.
Arthur Delaney contributed reporting.
