WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Representative Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) joined CNN and spoke with host Dana Bash on the Secret Service's failures in the assassination attempt on former President Trump.



Below are transcripts from the interview. Click here to watch the interview, where Houlahan calls on Secret Service Director Cheatle to resign. 

ANCHOR, DANA BASH: As we continue to monitor this hearing happening on Capitol Hill with the Secret Service director, I want to now talk to my guest here in the studio, Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan, also from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I want to obviously talk about the presidential race, but what do you make of the answers or non-answers that your colleagues are getting? 

 

HOULAHAN: Certainly, I've been able to watch while we were waiting to talk here. And what I saw was pretty unforgivable, really, honestly, a pretty bipartisan, resounding questioning of her. And she didn't have anything to say, as near as I can tell, that would help us understand what happened. It's unforgivable that any sitting president or former president or anybody under this security of our Secret Service should ever be exposed in a way that they were, he was, and in the way that people at the at the rally were. And so I am I'm along side my colleagues kind of deeply unnerved by the lack of answers and response from this hearing. 

 

ANCHOR: You were not in law enforcement, but you were an Air Force officer. So you have a sense of sort of operational situations, chain of command. Would you have any sense of just even listening here, and I'm sure reading and being briefed elsewhere, of how this could have possibly happened? 

 

HOULAHAN: I don't have a sense of that. I was hoping to hear some answers from this testimony and haven't heard anything that's given me any sort of assurance that there was such a protocol or action. I think that the buck does stop with the director there. And my guess is that you will be hearing for her calls for her resignation. I know you probably already have heard that. 

 

ANCHOR: Do you think she should resign?

 

HOULAHAN: I do.

Houlahan is an Air Force veteran, an engineer, a serial entrepreneur, an educator, and a nonprofit leader. She represents Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District, which encompasses Chester County and southern Berks County. She serves on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. She is the recipient of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Abraham Lincoln Leadership for America Award which “recognizes members who demonstrate the bipartisan leadership and constructive governing necessary to move our country forward” and the Congressional Management Foundation’s 2022 Democracy Award for best Constituent Services in Congress.

 

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