The House unanimously voted to establish a bipartisan task force to take a fine tooth comb to the occurrences that led to the near-assassination of Donald Trump earlier this month.
The vote was 416-0.
The group will include 13 members, seven Republicans and six Democrats. It came after a series of three congressional hearings this week on the matter – one with Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle that preempted her resignation.
A Judiciary Committee Hearing included testimony from FBI director Christopher Wray and the Homeland Security Committee heard testimony from Pennsylvania law enforcement officials and visited the scene of the shooting.
Having three separate committees of jurisdiction is what led leadership to establish one panel focused solely on the shooting.
The House unanimously voted to establish a bipartisan task force to take a fine tooth comb to the occurrences that led to the near-assassination of Donald Trump earlier this month
‘The security failures that allowed an assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life are shocking. … The task force will be empowered with subpoena authority and will move quickly to find the facts, ensure accountability, and make certain such failures never happen again,’ Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a joint statement.
The task force is similar to what was set up after the 9/11 attack, and another that was formed after January 6, 2021.
It’s not yet clear who will be appointed to the task force.
Already there’s been drama of who will sit on the panel. The right wing House Freedom Caucus put out a statement urging leadership to keep Homeland Security Committee ranking member Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., off the panel. Thompson led a bill that would strip protectees of their Secret Service detail if they were sentenced for a felony conviction.
Thompson later said he’d expressed no interest in serving on the task force.
Even after three separate hearings, many questions remain.
They wondered why a rooftop within rifle range of the stage was left out of the security perimeter of the rally and scratched their heads when Secret Service Director Cheatle insisted that agents had not been placed on that roof because it was ‘sloped.’
The FBI and Secret Service revealed to lawmakers last week they spotted shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks as a person of interest a full 62 minutes before he fired a shot.
Twenty minutes passed between the time Secret Service agents spotted Crooks with a gun on the rooftop and he fired shots at the president.
In a staggering moment, Cheatle admitted on Monday her agents on the ground were warned between two and five times that there was a ‘suspicious person’ reported before Trump took the stage.
While Trump walked around with little more than a bloody ear, Crooks killed former fire chief Corey Comperatore, 50, and critically injured two other rally goers sitting close to where the former president was speaking last weekend before he was neutralized.
Cheatle gave answers that were deemed woefully insufficient by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over why an agent was not stationed on the roof from where Crooks opened fire on the former president, and why Trump was allowed to take the stage even when a threat was detected.
Wray also told lawmakers the 20-year-old gunman flew a drone 200 yards from the stage just two hours before he opened fire in Butler, Pennsylvania, and had three explosives in his car.
Wray said Crooks had been ‘interested in public figures’ and ‘somewhere around July 6 or so he became very focused on former President Trump and his rally.’
The director said an analysis of Crooks’ laptop revealed he had searched on Google on July 6 ‘how far away was Oswald from Kennedy.’ It was the same day he registered to attend the Butler rally.
Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed former President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Wray said eight bullet cartridges had been recovered from the roof where Crooks fired off his shots toward the former president.
And he wouldn’t rule out that Crooks did not have any accomplices to the crime, saying it’s still being looked at by law enforcement.
On the day of the rally, Trump walked out onto the stage at 6:02 p.m.
Then at around 6:12 p.m. Crooks’ first shots rang out.
Cheatle could not tell lawmakers how the shooter had gotten onto the roof.
At the time of the shooting, law enforcement agents were inside the building, 147 yards away from where Trump stood, but not on top of it.
What transpired instead was a security nightmare: Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to scale the building and secure his own position, while law enforcement struggled to locate him even amid pressing warnings from members of the Trump crowd. But there wasn’t sufficient time to act on the tips, she explained.
‘The shooter was actually identified as a potential person of suspicion,’ Cheatle said. ‘Unfortunately, with the rapid succession of how things unfolded, by the time that individual was eventually located, they were on the rooftop and were able to fire off at the former president.’
She was referencing claims by witnesses that they alerted law enforcement about the threat, but agents weren’t able to eliminate the threat in time. Officials have pointed to the initial responding officer, who lifted himself up on the roof only to lower himself back when the gunman turned his weapon at him.
