Embattled Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle acknowledged the “buck stops with me” as she responded to criticism of her agency’s disastrous handling of former President Donald Trump’s attempted assassination — but refused to resign from her post.
“It was unacceptable,” Cheatle told ABC News Monday of her agency’s response to Saturday’s Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pa. “And it’s something that shouldn’t happen again.”
Cheatle has faced steadily increasing pressure to step down after overseeing security at the event which 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired multiple shots with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle from a nearby rooftop, wounding former President Trump and two others and killing a former firefighter.
“It was obviously a situation that as a Secret Service agent, no one ever wants to occur in their career,” she told the outlet.
“The buck stops with me. I am the director of the Secret Service, and I need to make sure that we are performing a review and that we are giving resources to our personnel as necessary.”
She said she would not resign when pressed.