Less than 24 hours after a disastrous appearance before the House Oversight Committee Congress that infuriated members of both political parties, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned her position Tuesday.

In the wake of the July 13 assassination attempt against Donald Trump that claimed the life of a Pennsylvania firefighter and left two other rally-goers in critical condition, Cheatle had acknowledged that the “buck stops with me,” but had shown no inclination to accept accountability either for herself or Secret Service officials responsible for the cascading series of errors that almost cost the former president his life.

Cheatle’s utter lack of transparency and candor during more than four hours of testimony before the House Oversight Committee Monday made her remaining tenure untenable.

In a letter released after the hearing, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, and Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democratic member, 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.”

And in remarks concluding the hearing, Raskin told her bluntly that she had to step down, saying she “had lost the confidence of Congress at a very urgent and tender moment in the history of this country.”

Cheatle acknowledged the inevitable in a letter of her own Tuesday. “As your Director, I take full responsibility for the security lapse,” she wrote. “In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your Director.”

Her decision was greeted with relief on Capitol Hill, but will not dissipate the pressure on a once-vaunted agency with a $3.1 billion annual budget and one primary mission: to protect the president of the United States, and the president’s family, as well as those pursuing the White House – or who once lived there, a dual description that fits Donald Trump.

But even the small shards of information Cheatle disclosed to the panel coupled with initial findings from members of Congress are providing significant clues about the security breakdowns that led to a gunman nearly killing President Trump, while murdering a rally-goer and injuring two others.

Over the last 48 hours, lawmakers who have talked to whistleblowers and local law enforcement are zeroing in on a troubling disconnect between the Secret Service and local law enforcement communications that may have contributed to a delay in the Secret Service recognizing 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks as a serious threat and only firing on him after he had fired upon Trump and the crowd.

Local police snipers first flagged Crooks as suspicious nearly an hour before he fired off the shots that pierced Trump’s right ear and killed Corey Comperatore and injured two others.

Although Crooks wasn’t armed at first, he looked so suspicious that a local law enforcement sniper positioned either at or in the American Glass Research building took two photos of him at 5:14 p.m. and another of a bike and a backpack near the building, though it is still unclear whether those items are associated with Crooks.

At that point, concerns only increased when the government sniper observed Crooks holding a range finder while still on the ground and looking at news feeds on his phone. Shortly after seeing the range finder, the local law enforcement sniper called into his own local command unit at 5:41 and described Crooks and noted that he had the device.

Four minutes later, he relayed his concerns about Crooks in a group text to other local law enforcement personnel on site and was instructed to report the suspect to a Beaver County police command unit.

It was not until 5:59 that a Beaver County law enforcement operator confirmed to a Butler County SWAT command that the main Secret Service command center was made aware of the messages and requested more information about the suspect’s location, the Johnson report said.

At 6:02, Trump took the stage as “God Bless America” played on a public address system.

At 6:05, the former president began addressing the crowd, and at 6:09, several attendees on the outskirts of the........

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