Distrust in the Secret Service Is Largely Bipartisan

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday after a disastrous appearance in front of the House Oversight Committee, during which Cheatle failed to take accountability and provide basic transparency to lawmakers about the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

After the hearing, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and ranking Democratic member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) urged Cheatle to resign.

“Today, you failed to provide answers to basic questions regarding that stunning operational failure and to reassure the American people that the Secret Service has learned its lessons and begun to correct its systemic blunders and failures,” they wrote. “In the middle of a presidential election, the Committee and the American people demand serious institutional accountability and transparency that you are not providing.”

Raskin told Cheatle point-blank that she had to step down at the end of the hearing, saying she “had lost the confidence of Congress at a very urgent and tender moment in the history of this country.”

Cheatle and the Secret Service may have lost the confidence of American citizens, too. A July 14 YouGov poll – conducted the day after an untrained 20-year-old gunman took unobstructed aim at a former president – shows that just 20% of Americans said they were “very confident” that the Secret Service could “protect presidential candidates from harm.”

Another 45% of Americans said they were “somewhat confident” in the agency, while 17% said they were “not very confident,” and 7% said they were “not at all confident.” Eleven percent of respondents were unsure.

Distrust in the Secret Service mirrors general skepticism of American institutions. A 2023 Gallup poll found that Americans’ levels of trust in major U.S. institutions are historically low, and do not seem to be improving over time.

There are certain institutions – like the Supreme Court and public schools – that have drastically different confidence levels when responses are broken down by party affiliation. But this is not the case with the Secret Service. One in four (23%) Democrats said they were “very confident” in the abilities of the Secret Service, compared to 20% of Republicans and 18% of independents.

Distrust in the agency, then, is largely bipartisan, and so was the grilling of Cheatle on Monday. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) pressed Cheatle on failing to come prepared:

“Why didn’t you bring a timeline with you today?” Greene asked. “Were you not prepared to answer questions?”

In another exchange, when Cheatle told lawmakers that the Secret Service’s report on the incident would take another 60 days to complete, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) became incensed.

“Not acceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez told Cheatle. “It has been 10 days since an assassination attempt on a former president of the United States. Regardless of party, there need to be answers.”