A 20-year-old white man named Thomas Matthew Crooks fired several shots from the roof of a building about 140 meters away from the podium of former President Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania , USA , injuring the upper part of Trump's right ear and killing one spectator and seriously injuring two others. A few seconds after the shooting, Crooks was shot dead on the spot by Secret Service agents.
On the 22nd, at an investigative hearing held by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee of the U.S. Congress, Chittel admitted that Trump's assassination this month was the "greatest failure in decades" of the Secret Service's security work. In her opening remarks, she compared Trump's assassination to the assassination of former Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1981, saying that she "takes full responsibility for any security negligence and dereliction of duty by the Secret Service." Despite the joint calls for her resignation from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Chittel still showed her willingness to stay, claiming that she is "the best person to lead the Secret Service at this time."
After the incident, the US political circles reacted strongly, and calls for Chittel to resign immediately were heard one after another. However, President Biden's "old comrade-in-arms" in Congress, Senator Chris Coons, said it was too early for Chittel to resign. Even so, on the 17th, James Cuomo, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee of the US Congress, summoned Chittel and asked her to attend a hearing hosted by the committee on the assassination of Trump, intending to criticize her first and then investigate her.
On the 22nd, Chittel attended a hearing amid a chorus of condemnation. At the hearing, Chittel admitted his mistakes and said he would "do everything in his power" to ensure that similar incidents would not happen again. However, senior Republicans, including U.S. House Speaker Johnson and U.S. Senate Minority Leader McConnell, demanded Chittel's resignation.
Although she admitted her mistakes, Chittel refused to resign, refused to answer the details of the case, and often did not know the answer to questions. When Republican Congresswoman Greene asked her to provide a detailed timeline of the incident, Chittel replied that she did not have one, which caused laughter in the audience. One congressman sarcastically asked, "Do you have to wait until Trump dies before you resign?"
The roof where the gunman was hiding became the most concerned topic for the congressmen at the hearing. Chittel claimed that the sloping roof was "safe" and said: "The highest point of the roof is inclined. For safety reasons, we don't want people to work on the sloping roof." However, a congressman immediately retorted: "I'm 70 years old, but I can run on that roof all day."
In this regard, the outside world suspected that someone else might have excluded the roof from the security scope of the event, and many American netizens took the opportunity to put forward various versions of conspiracy theories. A Republican congressman said that a whistleblower contacted his office and said: At that time, a Secret Service agent was originally assigned to the roof, but due to the hot weather, the security guard left his post without authorization, giving the gunman an opportunity to take advantage of.
At the hearing, some members of Congress asked: How long before the rally did they start checking the safety of the scene? Why did the Secret Service agents not know until the last second that someone in the crowd saw a gunman on the roof? Chittel skipped such important questions one by one, saying that "the report results have not been released yet."
After the hearing, Cuomo wrote an open letter to Chittel that day, in which he wrote: "On the 13th, under your leadership, the Secret Service failed to protect former President Trump, resulting in the serious consequence of one death and two injuries to the audience. In today's hearing, you remained silent on the basic issues of security failures. At this juncture, how can you restore the American people's trust in our security system? During the election, you failed to provide comprehensive protection and transparent disclosure of information to the public and the committee. For this, we call on you to resign." He also said: "The Secret Service has thousands of employees and a large budget, but it has now become the spokesperson for 'incompetence.'"