Independent panel issues scathing report on Secret Service and recommends leadership overhaul after Trump shooting
CNN
An independent panel of former law enforcement officials appointed under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recommended a complete overhaul of Secret Service leadership after reviewing the agency’s security failures that led to the near assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania this summer.
An independent panel of former law enforcement officials appointed under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recommended a complete overhaul of Secret Service leadership after reviewing the agency’s security failures that led to the near assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania this summer. In one of the most scathing reviews of the agency to date, the panel lambasted the Secret Service for its culture of “do more with less” and the general lack of “critical thinking” that permeated agents during and in the lead up to the Butler rally where Trump was shot and one rallygoer was killed. “The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved,” the panel wrote in its report released Wednesday. The panel – led by Mark Filip, deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush; Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama; and others – recommended leadership in the agency be replaced with outside individuals who could change the culture of the Secret Service, including the “present sense of complacency within the Service.” “Many of the issues that the Panel has identified throughout this report, particularly regarding the Panel’s ‘deeper concerns,’ are ultimately attributable, directly or indirectly, to the Service’s culture. A refreshment of leadership, with new perspectives, will contribute to the Service’s resolution of those issues,” the panel wrote. The agency is currently led by acting Director Ronald Rowe, who – though not named directly in the report’s recommendation for leadership change – comes from inside the ranks of the agency and was appointed after Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned in the wake of the near assassination.
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