Joco Today

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D., appeared on Fox Business's Evening Edit and Newsmax's The Record shortly after Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe, Jr., testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC) Committee.

During the hearing, Senator Marshall questioned Director Rowe about security failures that occurred on July 13th and expressed his frustration over the limited information provided to Congress and the public 17 days after the incident.

Senator Marshall stated, "What I would share with you is that folks back home don’t trust the FBI. They have no faith or competence in the Secret Service right now. And this hearing did nothing to relieve those fears that the Secret Service has significant institutional problems, cultural issues within it. And that’s why they need a big change. We need somebody to come in there, a crisis intervention team."

Marshall added, "There’s nothing that this secret service director is gonna be able to do right now. He cannot see the forest for the trees that he’s not objective. He’s trying to protect everybody’s job. People should be at least placed on leave until we get to the bottom of it."

The senator also noted that Director Rowe did not disclose who was responsible for denying President Trump additional security or other critical decisions: "He would not tell us who was responsible for denying President Trump more security, he wouldn’t tell us who makes the decisions to say no, we’re not going to use a drone."

Further criticizing Rowe's testimony, Marshall remarked, "He [Secret Service Acting Director Rowe] did deflect the blame to the local police and my specific question for him was did the Secret Service hold their meeting that morning with local police. Local police officers said that meeting never happened."

Marshall continued by calling for new leadership within the Secret Service: "We’ve all seen enough that there were individual failures. There were systemic failures there as well... This is why I’m calling for a crisis intervention team to come in there... Somebody needs to come in from the outside and clean that place out."

Addressing another issue during his interview, Marshall questioned why certain buildings were not included in the primary security range: "My second question for the acting director is why was that building not in the primary security range... At least he did come forth and say exactly what happened during those seven or eight minutes as you describe it."

Marshall concluded by reiterating his call for new leadership: "There’s really no one within the Secret Service I think that can turn the program around... We need to bring somebody from the outside in... We need to bring in new management and start over."