Ted Cruz, Secret Service leader tangle at Senate hearing over assassination attempt

Sign up for the We the Texans newsletter to receive twice-monthly updates on our year-long initiative dedicated to boosting civic engagement and chronicling how democracy is experienced in Texas.

---

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz accused the U.S. Secret Service on Tuesday of making a politically motivated decision to deny former President Donald Trump extra security, exposing him to an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month.

"I believe the Secret Service leadership made a political decision to deny these requests,” Cruz said during a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees Tuesday. “And I believe the Biden administration has been suffused with partisan politics.”

Ronald Rowe, acting director of the Secret Service who has served since 1999 for presidents of both parties, responded indignantly to the remark in a tense exchange where he asserted, “Secret Service agents are not political.”

Cruz retorted that Secret Service leadership is appointed by the president and is therefore a political position.

Secret Service has faced withering bipartisan criticism after a gunman came within an inch of shooting Trump in the head during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, just ahead of the Republican National Convention. Trump’s ear was grazed by a bullet, the FBI later reported, but he was otherwise unharmed.

Kim Cheatle, who was director of the agency when the shooting occurred, faced ire from lawmakers in both parties for her role in one of the biggest security failures since the 1981 attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. Secret Service failed to prevent Thomas Crooks, a 20-year-old man, from gaining access to a roof where he had a clear shot at the former president. Cheatle resigned from her post last week.

The U.S. House has opened a bipartisan inquiry into the security failures. U.S. Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Sherman, was named to serve on the inquiry, the only Texan.

Cruz has also previously blamed Secret Service’s efforts to diversify its ranks for distracting the agency from its core mission of protecting officials. During a podcast he released two weeks ago — after the Butler shooting — Cruz criticized the agency for its efforts to have 30% of agents be women by 2030.

“Well, this is yet another manifestation of what we've seen throughout the Biden administration, which is an obsessive focus on bean counting, on quotas, on DEI at the expense of the mission,” Cruz said.

Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said to CNN that criticisms of female officers “an insult to the women of our agency to imply that they are unqualified based on gender. Such baseless assertions undermine the professionalism, dedication and expertise of our workforce.”

Cruz confronted Rowe with reporting by The Washington Post that Trump’s security detail repeatedly — and unsuccessfully — requested additional resources from Secret Service in the years leading to the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally. Rowe acknowledged that that may have been the case in the past but said no resources were denied for the Butler rally.

Cruz demanded a full accounting of requests from Trump’s security detail and Secret Service’s responses, which Rowe agreed to provide. Cruz also repeatedly asked for who in the agency denied requests by Trump’s security detail and was unsatisfied when Rowe said requests went through an approval process.

“It’s a conversation. It’s not just an absolute yea or nay,” Rowe said of approving additional security requests.

“Does the buck stop anywhere?” Cruz asked.

Cruz also asked for the size of Trump’s security detail relative to President Joe Biden’s. Rowe said Trump traveled with a full security crew, though he acknowledged a sitting president has more personnel.

“What’s the difference?” Cruz interjected.

“National command authority to launch a nuclear strike, sir,” Rowe responded, impatience rising in his voice. “There are other assets that travel with the president that the former president will not get.”

Rowe said he would get a more detailed breakdown in the number of personnel for Trump and Biden for Cruz.

During the hearing, Rowe placed much of the blame for the security failures in Butler with local police. Secret Service often delegates to state and local law enforcement to cover all vulnerabilities.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who also serves on the Judiciary Committee, asked Rowe how the Secret Service, “being an elite law enforcement agency, would delegate to local enforcement or others who did not meet” the same standards as their agency, which admits only two percent of applicants.

“It was a failure to challenge our assumptions,” Rowe responded. “We made an assumption that there was going to be uniform presence out there, that there would be sufficient eyes to cover that, that there were going to be counter sniper teams in the AGR building, and I can assure you that we're not going to make that mistake again.”

---

The full program is now LIVE for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Explore the program featuring more than 100 unforgettable conversations on topics covering education, the economy, Texas and national politics, criminal justice, the border, the 2024 elections and so much more. See the full program.