WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior Republican lawmaker says he wants Secret Service Director Julia Pierson to leave her job.
And a senior Democrat also says he’s not comfortable with leading the agency — but he later said he hasn’t decided whether Pierson should lose her job.
Republican Jason Chaffetz (CHAY’-fihtz) of Utah called for Pierson’s ouster in a television interview last night. Hours earlier, Pierson appeared before Chaffetz and others at a House hearing, where she sought to explain an embarrassing White House security breach last month.
Today, Democrat Elijah Cummings told MSNBC that he’s not comfortable with Pierson as Secret Service chief. And a spokeswoman confirmed that Cummings was calling for Pierson’s ouster. Cummings himself later tweeted, “I have not decided about Pierson, but I’m not comfortable about the safety of the president of the United States of America.”
The September 19th incident involved a Texas Army veteran who jumped the White House fence and was able to make it deep into the executive mansion before being stopped. It’s now just one of several embarrassing disclosures about lapses in presidential security that just keep coming for the Secret Service.
On Sept. 16, a security contractor armed with a gun who had previously been arrested for assault rode on an elevator with President Barack Obama and his security detail at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
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031-v-35-(Jerry Bodlander, AP correspondent)–It appears the Secret Service may have a new security embarrassment to investigate. AP correspondent Jerry Bodlander reports. (1 Oct 2014)
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APPHOTO DCSA124: U.S. Secret Service Director Julia Pierson, center, is welcomed on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014, by House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., second from left, and the committee’s ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., left, as she arrives to testify before the committee’s hearing on the security breach at the White House when a man climbed over a fence, sprinted across the north lawn and dash deep into the executive mansion before finally being subdued. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (30 Sep 2014)
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