A hearing examining the Secret Service’s response to the assassination attempts on Donald Trump was derailed Thursday when a shouting match broke out between the agency’s acting director Ronald Rowe and a Republican representative.
The hearing, convened by the House task force created shortly after Trump’s first assassination attempt in July, was intended to examine steps the Secret Service has taken to improve security measures for protected individuals, but Pat Fallon , a Republican from Texas, made the decision to question Rowe in a different direction.
Fallon showed an enlarged photo of a commemoration of the September 11 attacks in New York, which both Joe Biden and Trump attended earlier this year. Fallon accused Rowe, who was standing directly behind Biden and Kamala Harris in the photo, of taking the place of the special agent in charge that day and endangering the president’s safety for the sake of a photo.
Rowe responded that the special agent responsible had just been out of the picture, and he attacked Fallon for politicizing the September 11 attacks.
“I was actually responding to Ground Zero. I was there going through the ashes of the World Trade Center,” Rowe said.
“I’m not asking you that,” Fallon interrupted, raising his voice. “Were you the special agent in charge?”
Rowe shouted back, “I was there to pay respects to a Secret Service member who died on September 11th.”
Fallon suggested that Rowe, who is not expected to stay on as director once Trump takes office in January, had put himself in a better position to “audition” for the role in case Harris wins the presidency.
“Don’t invoke 9/11 for political purposes,” Rowe told Fallon.
“I don’t,” Fallon replied. He accused Rowe of saying, “You put President Biden’s life and Vice President Harris’ life in danger because you removed those officers from their positions.”
Rowe denied that accusation, telling Fallon: “You’re going too far.”
The committee chairman, Republican Mike Kelly, banged his gavel repeatedly until the shouting continued. The heated debate came as the Secret Service faced intense scrutiny over its security practices, which drew widespread condemnation after Trump’s assassination attempt.
The agency was pilloried for failing to ensure proper security measures at Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman wounded the then-presidential candidate and fatally shot an attendee named Corey Comperatore. Rowe’s predecessor, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned amid bipartisan criticism of her agency’s handling of security at the meeting.
During Thursday’s hearing, Rowe described the events surrounding the assassination attempt as an “abject failure.”
Related: The head of the Secret Service denounces during a hearing in the House of Representatives after the shooting at the Trump rally
“July 13 was a failure by the Secret Service to adequately secure the Butler Farm Shows site and protect President-elect Trump,” Rowe said. “That stunning failure underscored critical gaps in the Secret Service’s operations, and I recognize that we have failed to meet the expectations of the American public.”
Rowe offered condolences to Comperatore’s family and outlined a series of changes his agency had implemented since the July attack, including setting up an aviation unit for drone surveillance of conservation sites and streamlining communications with local authorities.
“Let me be clear: there will be accountability, and that accountability is happening,” Rowe told the task force. “It is essential that we recognize the severity of our failures. Personally, I carry the weight of knowing that we almost lost a sheltered person and that our failure cost a father and husband his life.
Since its creation in July, the task force has conducted 46 interviews and reviewed about 20,000 pages of documents, Kelly reported Thursday. The task force is expected to release a final report on its findings in the coming days.
