Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle’s appearance before the House Oversight Committee on Monday to answer questions about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump was a disaster. The 27-year veteran of the agency was obstructive and defensive bordering on contemptuous in answers to questions from members of both parties. She frequently refused or failed to answer many of them.

Cheatle’s testimony came after she made an appearance on the floor of the Republican National Convention last week, where she was cornered by four Republican senators, including Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. The senators fired angry questions at her demanding how the Secret Service, the agency she heads, had failed to protect the Republican candidate for president just days before. She did not answer their questions and stood there like a robot whose motherboard had shorted out.

In one of the few questions she answered at the congressional hearing, Cheatle denied that the Trump campaign had requested additional protection for the Butler rally.

At issue, of course, was the near-miss assassination attempt by a 20-year-old lone gunman on Donald Trump at an outdoor rally on July 13. By now, dozens of diagrams and aerial photographs have been published showing the line of sight the shooter had from the rooftop of a nearby agricultural building to the rally stage. The distance was estimated at 150 yards, an easy shot even for a shooter with limited rifle training. The shooter was said to be using an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle made by Defense Procurement Manufacturing Services (DPMS) bought by his father in 2013. DPMS was one of the first civilian manufacturers of rifles based on the military’s M-16 rifle. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, (EFGS) a gun control group formed after the school shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, a DPMS AR-15 rifle was used in the mass shooting in San Bernadino, CA, in 2015. Fourteen people were killed and 22 were wounded in that shooting.

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DPMS was bought by Palmetto State Armory, a gun manufacturer that has specialized in mass-marketing AR-15-style rifles to the public. The company currently has a “Christmas in July” sale on its website, offering e-kits that can be used to assemble so-called “ghost guns” to get around federal firearms regulations, in addition to any........

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