U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle admitted to Congress on Monday that she and her agency failed when a would-be assassin wounded Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, but rebuffed bipartisan calls to resign.

"We failed," Cheatle said in testimony before the House of Representatives Oversight Committee. "The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on July 13th is the most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades."

Kimberly Cheatle, director of the U.S. Secret Service, acknowledged Monday that the near-assassination of former President Donald Trump represented a fundamental failure on her agency’s part, but refused to explain exactly what went wrong.

Speaking before lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Cheatle described the July 13 shooting of Trump and attendees at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, as “the most significant operational failure” at the Secret Service in decades.

The casket carrying the remains of the volunteer fire chief killed at Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday arrived at a Pennsylvania church Friday morning, draped in the US flag, ahead of his funeral.

Dozens of mourners paid their respects as firefighters carried the casket of Corey Comperatore, 50, into the Cabot, Pa., church for the 11 a.m. service.

The husband and father of two was killed while trying to shield his family when a gunman opened fire from a factory rooftop during Trump’s rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds Saturday evening.

After three days, an enigmatic portrait emerged of the 20-year-old man who came close to killing former President Donald Trump with a high-velocity bullet: He was an intelligent loner with few friends, an apparently thin social media footprint and no hints of strong political beliefs that would suggest a motive for an attempted assassination.

Thomas Crooks was pacing next to a warehouse building outside the Butler Farm Show grounds as a crowd gathered for one of former President Donald Trump's signature outdoor rallies.

Crooks had already been flagged as suspicious by law enforcement. By the time two police officers walked over to check him out, he was on the roof, belly crawling.

“He’s got a gun,” a bystander yelled.

The Trump rally shooter searched "major depressive disorder" before he nearly killed the former president, FBI director Chris Wray told Congress, according to reports.

Investigators uncovered the medical search on Thomas Matthew Crooks' cellphone, along with the times and dates of the Democratic and Republican national conventions and photos of Trump and President Biden, The New York Times reported. 

Crooks appears to be on good terms with his parents, who are both counselors, but they weren't part of his daily life, according to The Times. 

Dominic wrote on the long list of failures by the U.S. Secret Service over recent decades, but when it comes to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, one question in particular rises above them all: How did they allow a shooter to get on a roof that was in striking distance of Trump?

The U.S. Secret Service was under intense scrutiny on Sunday after a gunman managed to evade its agents and open fire on former President Donald Trump at a political rally, with Republican leaders vowing swift investigations and President Joe Biden calling for an independent review.

The gunman, a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man, injured Trump and killed a rally attendee from a rooftop perch around 150 yards (140 m) from the stage where the former president was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, officials said.

A small crowd of mourners gathered on Friday for the funeral of the Kazakh opposition activist and YouTuber Aidos Sadykov, who was assassinated in Kyiv, Ukraine — a killing that colleagues said had cast a chill over journalists and exiles in Ukraine and the wider region.

A former opposition politician and trade unionist, Mr. Sadykov, 55, lived in Ukraine after fleeing Kazakhstan, his homeland, with his family 10 years ago. He was granted political asylum in Ukraine and, with his wife, ran a widely followed YouTube Channel covering events in Kazakhstan.

New swing-state polling has revealed a rare — and alarming — consensus: Roughly equal shares of Republicans, Democrats and independents believe violence could plague the 2024 election.

Why it matters: Former President Trump and his allies have already signaled they will not accept the results of the election if they believe it's "unfair," reviving the type of rhetoric that helped incite the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.