Secret Service ex-director who quit after Trump assassination attempt faces fresh humiliation
The decision by the Secret Service, first reported by RealClearPolitics came after a wave of fierce opposition from Republican lawmakers, including Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), who led a sweeping investigation into the agency's catastrophic failures at Trump's July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
'Following the security debacle in Butler, the former director of USSS made the right decision to resign,' Johnson said. 'I see no reason for her security clearance to be reinstated.'
Cheatle, handpicked by then–First Lady Jill Biden in 2022, had previously led the agency through what congressional investigators later described as one of the most glaring security breakdowns in presidential protection in modern history.
Trump narrowly survived the July 13, 2024, shooting after a bullet grazed his ear, while a local firefighter, Corey Comperatore, was killed and two others were wounded in the chaos.
Cheatle stepped down just 10 days later following intense pressure from lawmakers who demanded accountability over a security detail that failed to station an officer on the rooftop where the gunman had positioned himself, among other lapses.
The revocation of her clearance is not only a personal humiliation for Cheatle, but also a stark departure from past practice.
For decades, the Secret Service has routinely renewed security clearances for its former directors, maintaining open channels for consultations on national security issues.
But under new Director Sean Curran, a Trump loyalist and the former head of the president's protective detail, that tradition has now ended.
'Director Curran has been modernizing the intelligence apparatus within the agency,' a Secret Service spokesperson said. 'During that process, he has determined that not all former directors will have their clearances renewed.'
The process to renew Cheatle's clearance was already underway until RealClearPolitics inquired about Johnson's objections. Soon after, the agency seemed to reverse course.
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), a Judiciary Committee member who jointly investigated the Butler debacle, offered no sympathy.
'Kim Cheatle disgraced the Secret Service by failing to prevent a horrifying attempt on President Trump's life,' Blackburn said in a statement.
'Not only did she oversee one of the greatest security failures in our nation's history, but she also stonewalled congressional oversight and ran away from my colleagues and me when we confronted her.
'Under no circumstances should she be allowed to regain her security clearance, and it is shameful she would even try.'
On the one-year anniversary of the Butler rally, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), now chair of the Homeland Security Committee, issued a scathing report accusing Cheatle of lying to Congress when she claimed under oath she had not denied requests for increased security for Trump.
Cheatle, speaking through her attorney, denied the accusation in a rare public statement.
'Any assertion or implication that I provided misleading testimony is patently false and does a disservice to those men and women on the front lines who have been unfairly disciplined for a team, rather than individual, failure.'
And it appears this may not be the last of it. House Oversight Chair Rep. James Comer has said a criminal referral is still on the table.
'If stark evidence of an intentional effort to deceive arises... this Committee will respond,' an Oversight aide said.
'Whether or not Ms. Cheatle's testimony meets the legal definition of misleading Congress, it's clear she failed in her mission leading the agency and appropriately resigned.'
According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released in July, the Secret Service received classified warnings about a possible Iranian threat to Trump 10 days before the Butler rally but that intelligence that was never passed to agents securing the site.
The report, commissioned by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), reinforced suspicions that Cheatle's office had treated Trump more like a former president than a current presidential candidate, despite clear evidence that he was a high-value target.
Multiple Secret Service insiders said Cheatle's team had repeatedly denied Curran's requests for additional counter-sniper support and other heightened security assets during the 2024 campaign.
Cheatle's fall is just one part of a much larger shake-up in the US intelligence world under Trump's second term.
Within 24 hours of retaking office, the president signed an executive order revoking the clearances of dozens of former intelligence officials including the now-infamous '51 spies who lied' who had signed a 2020 letter dismissing the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story as 'Russian disinformation.'
Among those stripped of access: John Brennan, James Clapper, Leon Panetta, Michael Hayden, and John Bolton.
In March, Trump went further, ordering the suspension of clearances for the Democratic-aligned law firm Perkins Coie, which was central to commissioning the now-discredited Steele dossier during the 2016 election.
A federal judge has since blocked that order, but DOJ lawyers are appealing.
National security attorney Sean Bigley said the revocations reflect a reform that is long-overdue.
'You have all of these former government bureaucrats, who are continuing to have access to the highest level of classified information... and then they can go and take that continued insider access and make themselves a hot commodity in the private sector or on the cable news circuit,' Bigley told RCP.
'That's not what security clearances are supposed to be used for – it's a fringe benefit that should be pulled.'
Despite Cheatle's ousting, Trump has publicly taken a more tempered tone toward the Secret Service rank-and-file.
'They should have had communications with the local police... So there were mistakes made,' Trump said in an interview last month with Fox News.
'But I was satisfied in terms of the bigger plot... And I have great confidence in these people... They had a bad day. And I think they'll admit that.'
Last month, the agency suffered another embarrassing episode when a Secret Service agent tried to sneak his wife onto an Air Force One flight during Trump's overseas trip to Scotland.
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