>> "washington journal" continues. host: joining us now is ryan barber, with the "wall street journal," reporting on matters of justice and others related to criminal affairs, including the secret service. here to talk about that hearing with the secret service director, thanks for being here. guest: thank you for having me. host: what were legislators looking to hear from kimberly cheadle? guest: committee members scheduled this nine days after the shooting and made a point of saying that we could have asked for a hearing immediately and we had the appetite for the information to do that, but we wanted to give you time and understood that you needed time to get the answers and have various law enforcement agencies examine what happened. they emerged entirely unsatisfied, yesterday. one question after another.

questions that they saw as basic, things that one lawmaker said every american was asking at their neighborhood diner or at a ballgame. the director was often not able to answer. in fairness to the secret service, some of that came down to the sensitivities of an ongoing investigation and not wanting to divulge information that could complicate that process, but we are still talking about the first attempted assassination of a current or former president since 1981. as i mentioned, there was just this appetite for answers and they really came up dry and frustrated. host: in the lead up, you said legislators were looking to get a couple of questions answered. number one, why the roof of the building from -- from the person who attempted to assassinate the president, why that wasn't secure. how was that addressed and answered by the director? guest: for lawmakers, completely

unsatisfactorily. she essentially used the word overwatch. the plan called for overwatch, but didn't get clarity on yeah, the key question that we have. so, that was incredibly frustrating. going into the hearing, we saw some lawmakers primarily on the republican side were already calling for her resignation before she even came before them for her first ever congressional hearing. it's not a senate confirmed position. this was actually her first time doing this in a public setting. republican lawmakers, several of them came in with their minds made up about whether she should have a future with the secret service and at the end of the hearing we had democratic lawmakers after a very partisan year and a half now, marked by an impeachment inquiry that this particular committee has been spearheading having a twilight zone moment of -- my goodness, we are agreeing.

i, a democrat, think that you, director cheadle, should resign. it really was this remarkable moment we are even the top democrat on the panel, jamie raskin, concluded by returning to the dais in saying that i will be signing a letter with my republican counterpart calling on her to be, to step down as secret service director. host: one of the other questions was why, even after the man was spotted as suspicious, that the former president went out to speak. guest: i thought that that was one area of the hearing where i personally felt i was learning more. so, what the director tried to explain was that the shooter, thomas matthew crooks, had been spotted one hour before the shooting on the periphery of the site, outside of the secure area, near where they have things like magnetometers and the like, had been spotted with

a rangefinder, which for those unfamiliar with that device, it's sort of like binoculars, although most will have one scope as opposed to two, and then he had a backpack as well. one of the lines that just sticks in my memory the most from the hearing is -- a rangefinder is not in and of itself a threat. a backpack is not in and of itself a threat. essentially, what she was trying to say was that there is a distinction between suspicious and threatening and what law enforcement had to go on before trump took the stage was merely somebody acting suspiciously, which happens at events. it was only in a matter of seconds before shots began to ring out that this evolved and escalated into a very clear threat. host: ryan barber is with us and if you want to ask him a question about this

assassination attempt against the former president and how the secret service handled it, call in on the lines. (202) 748-8001, democrats. (202) 748-8002, republicans. independents, (202) 748-8002. text us your questions or comments at (202) 748-8003. one of the things that she talked about was who signs off on something being secure or not. there was a long answer and it was a lot of the questioning, but elaborate, what was said by the director? host: lawmakers -- guest: lawmakers took a keen interest in how these plans are drawn up. from our reporting, yes, there is even a piece of paper somewhere that delineates who had responsibility for what. what she said yesterday, what the secret service said in the lead up, was that the secret service was primarily responsible for what the agency

would call, especially those innermost rings of the three concentric rings of security, where you have the inner details surrounding in this case former president trump, those were the agents that you saw swarming him, whisking him off the stage, then you have the second ring, the immediate venue space, the crowd, the areas where people have to go through magnetometers in the first place. that is something that the secret service monitors and secures in partnership with local law enforcement. then there is the outer perimeter, where they have long range, you know, they have snipers looking out there, they have local law enforcement. they draw this up. what she said was that she did not personally sign off on the event security for that day and that that is not unusual, she said that there is a whole conjunction of lower-level officials who do that.

she was essentially trying to say yes, we conduct advance work at these sites and we come up with a plan. top officials sign off on the plan. two things can be true at once, we can be responsible for the plan and draw it up, but there are also local law enforcement responsible for bits and pieces of it. what she said was that local law enforcement was ultimately responsible for the building where he took his shot. we have seen that emerge as just a really sticky issue for the secret service to try to communicate. because i think in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, they were saying things like -- we take responsibility. the director in an interview said that the buck stops with her, but there is the other truth, local law enforcement has responsibility, and we saw that emerge as a bit of a flashpoint and a point of tension between

the secret service and some groups that advocate for local law enforcement. host: several members said that in an interview she offered more information then she offered to the lawmakers. is there truth to that? guest: there were certainly moments where i found that the news interviews generally, like she did an interview with cnn -- on the whole those probably -- i can understand why lawmakers would see it they got more information out of those they and the hearing. i think that there are a couple of different explanations for that. there could be a clamming up effect that happens in the face of all of these lawmakers, many of whom have already called for your let -- your resignation. there is also, as i mentioned,

we are now at a point where the fbi, the department of homeland security, the inset -- inspector general, they have all been conducting their investigation and talking to a lot of agents. the sense within the agency is that we need to be careful about what we communicate now in order to avoid doing anything that could interfere with the investigation. host: this is ryan barber of the "wall street journal," joining us to talk about the events of the shooting. leslie, good morning. caller: good morning. guest: morning, leslie. caller: hi. i kind of have a question that probably isn't exciting to a bunch of people, but i watched the entire congressional meeting or whatever. kind of -- i didn't understand -- when they were talking about people being sent from pittsburgh, extra people, to cover what was going on, and

they said that there were 12 people sent to joe biden at the racetrack -- at the casino, only four to donald trump, because the risk assessment for joe biden was higher than that for donald trump. can you explain that? guest: i think that the best explanation i can give is to recount how the director answered the question yesterday, which is that the secret service makes threat assessments and divvy of resources accordingly. one area that we have seen emerge in the last week that has been interesting that has, that was true, that was true in the months and years even leading up to the shooting on the 13th was that there had been reporting in the two years leading up to the shooting that the trump security detail requested additional

racehorses that the secret service sometimes turned down. those requests were not specific to the july 13 rally. they were for events preceding it. what we have learned from that is that the secret service says -- hey, even if we cannot ourselves provide the extra resources requested, let's make sure to find a way to get those resources to an event or to change the plan entirely to reduce exposure appropriately. so, in this case, in a lot of cases, you have seen them pull in local and state resources to fill the roles. i understand that that is a long way, perhaps, of answering your question, which is that at the end of the day, even as this bit of an argument has come up about the resources allocated to jill biden versus trump, what this

service director said was that there was not a shortage, in their view, of resources, that they in working with local and state law enforcement had what they needed that they, it was clearly more just a breakdown of the plan and of the communication between the various collaborating agencies. host: rich, democratic line, new jersey, go ahead. caller: yes, i watch the hearing yesterday and i was sort of taken aback, they didn't really distinguish between the lines where the secret service was and the area outside of it, which were local and state police. there was a big issue regarding communications with the secret service when the shooter was first identified as a suspicious person. my question is, and it wasn't addressed yesterday, can the local police detain and hold a suspicious person, who turned

out to be the shooter, or do they have to call secret service and do they have to come and make the arrest? guest: that's such a great question and one of the interesting things i learned in the course of reporting is that one of the reasons that local and state police are often tasked with the outer ring of security, so outside of the secure area but still within the vicinity of the site, is that it's helpful to have local and state versus federal law-enforcement fill the role, because they are more in position to actually apply local law and enforce it, if and when issues arise. so, that is -- so, when local and state police engage with somebody, that is really a case-by-case analysis of whether the conduct arises to the level of an arrestable offense versus hey, we think you are acting suspiciously, let's stop you,

ask you what you are up to, try to get out some information about what has you at the event, and perhaps why do you have certain items or why you are in certain locations. there is a real sense of a sliding scale that is dependent on the unique facts and circumstances. but certainly, certainly, there would have been an opportunity for a law enforcement officer to go up to the gunman, if they saw something suspicious, saying what's this all about, what is your backpack all about, have that conversation. what we have been hearing in the 10 days since the shooting is that it's not clear if that kind of interaction ever did take place and one thing that we have heard, just in our reporting, that there was something certain about officers leaving their post to do that kind of work, to have that conversation, to do that extra level of

investigation even in an informal conversation because there was this concern about leaving a post and potentially a gap in the security plan like we've been talking about. host: 10 days later, how much of a better picture do we have of the shooter? guest: 10 days later in the shooter in something of an enigma, still. we have heard from family and associates that he was somewhat of a loner. apparently law-enforcement enforcement went to his house and it was very cluttered, almost resembled something that you would see out of a hoarder. one of my colleagues at the journal spoke to a member of his math book club, who said that -- you know -- when the conversation turned to politics, he wasn't engaged or animated. he -- a lot of people are kind of looking for whether there was a partisan motivation here. it's just not clear that there was one. another thing we heard from law

enforcement is that in the lead up to the shooting, he searched the images of a lot of top officials in the federal government. there was no, there was no particularly partisan direction there. he was looking at photos of mike johnson, of the top democrats in the house, of hakeem jeffries. images of trump and biden. which has led some former law enforcement officials to, to speculate, and it's just that, spec -- speculation, that this might have been more of an equal opportunity fame seeker looking for a top public official of any stripe, as opposed to really having any animus directed towards one party or another. host: if you want to ask ryan barber questions, you can call the lines were post on social media. let's hear from joe. joe, you are next up, good morning. caller: good morning, i have a

bit of a head cold, i hope i'm speaking clearly. it's ironic, the policy, because i hadn't heard anything about probable cause. i mean, this is their job. he could have stopped him like anybody, anywhere, for any articulable suspicion. as far as leaving the post, we are all trained in diversion tactics and things like that, a contingency, if i was unopposed and got engaged here, i would have flagged it. wherever you pulled resources from, like are you a photographer? i mean there's lots of ways of leading someone down a path and there are a bunch of holes in that story. the story got very complicated in a unnecessarily diversionary manner. like, probable cause? articulable suspicion? it's the job of