Secret Service leadership and agents who guarded then-US presidential candidate Donald Trump during the July 2024 assassination attempt have not been held accountable for mistakes made on the day of his campaign rally, CNN reported, citing its sources.
Secret Service officers are extremely disappointed with the response following the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Although the then-secret service chief, Kimberly Cheatle, soon resigned, according to law enforcement sources, all the people responsible for Trump's security that day should have been immediately removed from their jobs.
In the year after the assassination attempt, however, only six Secret Service employees have been held accountable - they were briefly suspended from duty without pay. Moreover, most of them work in the Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) office, notes CNN. Within the Secret Service, this is perceived as an attempt to scapegoat the Pittsburgh office and shift responsibility for the mistakes of their superiors onto it.
Previously, Deputy Director of the Secret Service Matt Quinn said that six agents responsible for protecting Trump at the Butler rally were suspended for periods ranging from 10 to 42 days. When the agents returned to work, the scope of their tasks became more limited, and their functions themselves became less responsible.
The current US leader Trump survived two assassination attempts last year. The first occurred at an election rally in Butler in July 2024 - then a bullet fired by a sniper grazed the politician's ear. The second time, a radical and supporter of aid to Ukraine opened fire near Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. In December 2024, in its report, a House of Representatives task force placed the primary responsibility for the failure to prevent the first assassination attempt on Trump on the part of the US Secret Service employees and leadership.