Secret Service Director Resigns After Trump Assassination Attempt

The director of the Secret Service, Kimberly A. Cheatle, resigned on Tuesday, after security failures surrounding the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump and calls for her to step down from prominent Republican lawmakers.

According to an email sent to Secret Service agents on Tuesday, Ms. Cheatle said that one of the Secret Service’s foremost duties is to protect the nation’s leaders and that the agency “fell short of that mission” during the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump.

“As your director I take full responsibility for the security lapse,” Ms. Cheatle said in the email, which an official dictated to The New York Times.

The resignation is a rapid fall for the agency veteran who protected Dick Cheney and Joseph R. Biden Jr. in their vice-presidential tenures and was publicly supported by Biden administration officials after a gunman shot at Mr. Trump at a rally on July 13. The glaring security mistakes before the shooting, however, and the heated criticism that Ms. Cheatle faced in the days since had left her position increasingly in doubt.

Mr. Biden gave high praise to Ms. Cheatle in an announcement of her appointment to the position in August 2022. Mr. Biden said in a statement then that his family “came to trust her judgment and counsel” and that she had the president’s “complete trust.” She worked for the agency for nearly three decades.

But her fortunes changed when Mr. Trump was injured in the shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, July 13, though he was pulled off the stage and pronounced safe. A former local fire chief attending the rally, Corey Comperatore, was killed. Two other attendees were hospitalized.