Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told Newsmax on Friday that the head of the U.S. Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, should testify "publicly" about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
Lankford told "Wake Up America" on Friday, "We were not able to get answers" from Cheatle when a group of senators, including Lankford, confronted her during the Republican National Convention earlier this week about the shooting at Trump's rally in Pennsylvania last weekend.
A video taken on Wednesday and shared on social media by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., showed her, along with Sens. John Barrasso, R-Utah, Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., and Lankford grilling Cheatle, who did not respond to their questions, on the floor of the Milwaukee arena where the convention took place.
He added that he told Cheatle at the time, "I serve on the [Senate] Homeland Security Committee. We have already reached out to you and your office. We want you to be able to appear before us next week. Are you coming?"
Lankford said that he told Cheatle, "We've not gotten an answer back from you if we can do a public hearing yet, your team has been stalling that. And she immediately said, 'This is not the right forum to discuss this, I'm leaving, goodbye,' basically."
According to Lankford, the senators tracked down Cheatle at the event and approached her in order to say, " 'We had a call with you four hours ago. You didn't answer our questions then. We want to be able to get some answers now and then. For me, serving on Homeland Security, I want you to be able to do these publicly as well.' "
The senator added, "It's not an unreasonable question that we all have. If they knew before the [former] president ever went on the stage, that there was a threat somewhere in the crowd, and they were trying to find that threat … Why did they let the [former] president go on stage at that point, if they knew there was a threat about 150 yards away?"
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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