Rep. Gerry Connolly on Monday accused Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle of evading his question on whether the abundance of AR-15s made agents' jobs more difficult during a hearing on the assassination attempt of Donald Trump.
"You’re speaking on behalf of 8,000 members who put their lives on the line," Connolly said during a House Oversight Committee hearing. "We just had a failure [during the assassination attempt], by your own admission. Do guns make your job easier or harder?"
"I think the job of the Secret Service is difficult on every day," Cheatle responded. "And we need to make sure that we are mitigating all threats, whether that be weapons —"
"That is not my question," Connolly said. "And now I think you're evading the answer, which is not a hard one."
"I am sorry that you feel that way, sir," Cheatle said.The Virginia Democrat questioned how a 20 year-old shooter could get so close to the podium with his father's AR-15. The Secret Service director noted that AR-15 gun availability are part of the "environment."
Dissatisfied with Cheatle's answer, Connolly noted he was familiar with political violence, noting that a man came to his Virginia office with a metal baseball bat last year."He came to kill me," Connolly recounted. "When he couldn't, he beat one of my staffers eight times with a baseball bat on the head. We live with the threat of violence."
