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Yeah, baring evidence not presented yet, Cheatle just seems at worst incompetent and at best woefully hands-off, rather than malicious. I absolutely would like to see more serious consequences where evidence of bad behavior is clear -- Shelton Snow doesn't seem to have even been fired, and plausibly violated some laws; the various defiance of subpoenas or lying before Congressional committees -- but the part where they're almost never fired or forced to resign makes it kinda hilariously optimistic to ask for criminal prosecution.
But it isn't constitutionally prohibited, or even prohibited by statute. There's even statutes that are supposed to specifically prohibit government employees doing this sort of bad behavior. They're just never or almost never enforced.
I'm curious about her career. 20+ years in the Secret Service, with a majority of that on VP detail -- she reportedly escorted Cheney on 9/11 and later worked with the Biden family. A couple of years into Trump's admin, she quits and becomes a security bigwig for Pepsi. Biden pulls her back in about 18 months ago to head the SS.
One can guess that she hit it off with the Bidens during the Obama admin -- and who knows what crazy stuff she witnessed on that family's detail -- as they wanted her back last year. Did she move to Pepsi due to some issue with the Trump admin -- or Pence, if she was on his detail? Or did they have a problem with her if she was showing loyalties to the previous regime?
[EDIT: Answering my own question: "In 2016, she was appointed as the special agent in charge of the James J Rowley Training Center — the 202-acre Secret Service training academy." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-22/secret-service-director-kimberly-cheatle/104113980 Maybe she just didn't like the change from detail agent to a desk job?]
I noticed a few senators asking pointedly about her private communications with Jill Biden, and then saw some suggestions on X today that she may have been "involved" with Dr. Jill, so maybe that's a rumor swirling around DC and just starting to poke its head out for the rest of us.
It is intriguiging that someone who seems to display zero leadership or professional curiosity was gifted with the top job; but sometimes these figurehead roles can be handled with some quality delegation and run on autopilot -- until the shit hits the fan, leaving the detached leader looking like a deer in the headlights because they never really knew what was happening.
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Did the congressional hearings ever explain the "sloped roof" thing? I can think of hypotheses under which she's not malicious there (it was never really a thing, some underling told her 2+2=5 and she didn't see an issue with repeating that), but the null hypothesis here still seems to be "she just made something up in the middle of an investigation", which would mean it's at least some evidence of malice. We don't get pissed at Nixon because we think he broke into the Watergate; just helping with the coverup was bad enough.
No answers were given, but one of the 'critters had done some research and noted that the slope on the roof in question is within the ADA parameters for a wheelchair ramp...
There's quite a bit of funny shit on the record there, including a different guy telling her that she should 'go back to guarding Doritos'.
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I mean, not necessarily. Probably she spun a tale literally on the spot, just to have something to say. She failed the speech check this time. But when it does work, you don't notice. That's PR. No spokesperson is ever going to honestly say "we can't do our jobs well and I have no explanation."
Perhaps such an attitude technically is malicious, but no more so than any other PR in the history of PR.
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It was referred to several times. I think once she said something about it like, "I should have been clearer in my statement about that..." without really explaining what that meant. It was a truly abysmal and laughably uninvested performance by her. I couldn't tell if she was a professional time-waster, an incompetent of sociopathic proportions, or a malicious actor. It's bewildering how detached she was from her professional responsibilities.
I got the feeling she'd already given up on trying to keep her job
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She was asked and, like most of her answers, basically didn't answer it straight -- though she did throw out something not quite related. All she said was that in general, the Secret Service prefers "sterile rooftops". Either way I don't assign the comment much weight at all -- it's bound to be superceded by whenever we get an actual investigation report.
No, the real question is how quickly we get the report and how detailed the public-facing version is.
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