Congress creates Trump assassination attempt task force with ‘subpoena power’ that will get to the bottom of the absolute ‘security failure’ that nearly killed the former president

The House of Representatives voted unanimously to create a bipartisan team to investigate the events leading up to the near-assassination of Donald Trump earlier this month.

The vote was 416-0.

The group will have 13 members, seven Republicans and six Democrats. It comes after a series of three congressional hearings this week on the issue — one with Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle that prevented her resignation.

During a hearing of the Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray was heard, and the Homeland Security Committee heard testimony from Pennsylvania law enforcement officials and visited the scene of the shooting.

Because there were three separate committees, leaders decided to create one panel to focus solely on the shooting.

“The security failures that allowed the assassination attempt on Donald Trump to occur are shocking. … The Task Force will have subpoena power and act swiftly to determine the facts, ensure accountability, and ensure such failures never happen again,” Chairman Mike Johnson and House Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a joint statement.

The task force is similar to one formed after the September 11 attacks and another formed after January 6, 2021.

It is not yet clear who will be appointed to the task force.

There has already been drama over who will sit on the panel. The right-wing House Freedom Caucus issued 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 protection officers of their Secret Service detail if they are convicted of a crime.

Thompson later said he had not expressed interest in serving on the task force.

Even after three separate hearings, many questions remain.

They wondered why a roof within gun range of the stage was kept outside the rally’s security zone and scratched their heads when Secret Service Director Cheatle insisted that no agents were posted on that roof because it was “sloping.”

The FBI and Secret Service revealed to lawmakers last week that they had identified gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks as a suspect 62 minutes before he fired.

Twenty minutes passed between the time Secret Service agents saw Crooks on the roof with a gun and him shooting the President.

In a stunning moment, Cheatle admitted Monday that her officers on the scene were alerted two to five times that a “suspicious person” had been reported before Trump took the stage.

As Trump walked around with little more than a bleeding ear, Crooks killed 50-year-old former fire chief Corey Comperatore and seriously wounded two other attendees sitting near where the former president spoke last week before being taken out.

Cheatle gave answers that were widely dismissed by lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum as grossly inadequate, including why there was no officer on the roof 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 that just two hours before opening fire in Butler, Pennsylvania, the 20-year-old gunman flew a drone 200 yards from the stage and had three explosives in his car.

According to Wray, Crooks was “interested in public figures” and “sometime around July 6, he became very focused on former President Trump and his rally.”

The director said an analysis of Crooks’ laptop showed he had searched Google for “how far Oswald was from Kennedy” on July 6, the same day he had registered to attend the Butler meeting.

Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed former President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

According to Wray, eight rounds of ammunition were found on the roof where Crooks shot the former president.

He also would not rule out that Crooks had no accomplices in the crime, saying the case was still being investigated by police.

On the day of the rally, Trump walked onto the stage at 6:02 p.m.

Around 6:12 p.m., Crooks’ first shots rang out.

Cheatle could not tell lawmakers how the shooter got onto the roof.

At the time of the shooting, police officers were inside the building, 440 feet (135 meters) from where Trump was standing, but not on top of it.

What happened instead was a security nightmare: Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to scale the building and secure his own position, while police struggled to find him, even amid urgent warnings from Trump supporters. But there wasn’t enough time to act on the tips, she explained.

“The shooter was actually identified as a potential suspect,” Cheatle said. “Unfortunately, given the rapid pace of events, by the time the individual was eventually located, he was already on the roof and was able to fire at the former president.”

She pointed to claims from witnesses that they alerted police to the threat, but that officers were unable to eliminate it in time. Officials have pointed to the first responding officer, who pulled himself up onto the roof and then lowered himself back down when the gunman pointed his weapon at him.