Members of the congressional task force investigating the July assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump visited the site of the shooting in Butler, Pa., on Monday and emphasized the bipartisan nature of their probe.
Members of both parties named to the task force last month made it clear that they are aiming to put partisanship aside during their probe in remarks to the press after touring the fairgrounds where Trump and three others were shot, including one fatally, during a July 13 rally.
The task force has been tapped by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., to get to the bottom of the security failures that allowed a former president and current Republican nominee for president to be shot in the ear and be “inches away from an American catastrophe,” as Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., put it.
“There's not one person on this conference that's identifying just as a Republican or a Democrat. We're identifying as members of Congress on a task force with a task to restore the faith and trust and confidence the American people have to have in our system,” said Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., who is leading the task force and lives in Butler.
Kelly noted it’s been “very difficult” to get the task force together with Congress out of session and members running for reelection, but that work “started weeks ago.”
Monday was the first time members of the task force had gathered in person, but he said that they had a briefing with the FBI last week and Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, the ranking Democrat on the task force, said that staff members are “in regular communication with all of the federal agencies involved.”
“We're going to have tough debates, and we're in the midst of an election cycle right now, and all of us are going to have those tough debates, but in the United States of America, you do not get to attempt to assassinate our elected officials and our candidates. It's unacceptable,” Crow added. “We are standing here in a bipartisan way to send the message that we won't tolerate it. So we're going to get answers. The American people have a lot of questions. We have a lot of questions.”
The nine members of the task force in attendance on Monday — four were absent — toured the fairgrounds and climbed onto the roof where the would-be assassin, 20-year-old Pennsylvania man Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire until he was shot and killed by a Secret Service countersniper. The security failure lead to the resignation of then-Secret Service director Kim Cheatle and at least five Secret Service agents were placed on modified duty, including one assigned to Trump’s protective detail, according to the Associated Press.
“It is so important that this task force has the opportunity to do what we did here, to actually walk these grounds, to see this area, to get an understanding of the physical space and where this security shortcoming took place,” said Rep. Laurel Lee, R-Fl., “And I'll tell you, for many of us, it raises more questions than we came here with today, because we can see it's not a large place. We can get a sense of the area and just how close these buildings were to that stage where President Trump stood that day.”
Secret Service acting director Ronald Rowe Jr., Cheatle’s successor, has said that his agency “assumed” state and local law enforcement providing security that day had the roof where Crooks fired from secured, but that ultimately it was “a Secret Service failure” and he “in no way” blamed the other agencies on the ground. Multiple rally attendees had spotted Crooks prior to the shooting and attempted to alert law enforcement and body-cam footage shows local police had spotted Crooks on the roof and attempted to climb up before returning to his car to grab his gun.
“There was knowledge ahead of time that there was a person of suspicion on that roof and armed. The key was: get the former president of the United States off the podium. Then there's nothing that has to take place,” Kelly said. Corey Comperatore, the rallygoer who was killed in the shooting, “would be alive today, the two men that were wounded, the president. And also not only did we lose Mr. Comperatore that day, the Crooks family lost their son.”
When asked by the press, Crow declined to comment on behalf of the task force on whether they planned to speak with Crooks’ family and other people who knew him. Crooks lived in nearby Bethel Park, Pa.
Moskowitz also shot down a theory spread by one of the task force members not in attendance on Monday, Florida Republican Rep. Mike Waltz, that Crooks didn’t act alone and was possibly aided by foreign actors.
“Mike Waltz is a fantastic member from Florida. I think it's too early to make that determination, and at this moment, I don't think anyone on the task force has seen any hard evidence that would suggest that would be the case,” Moskowitz said.
Meanwhile in Washington, five Republican House members not assigned to the task force held a forum on the assassination attempt at the headquarters of the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank. Guests included popular right-wing media figure Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent; close Trump ally Erik Prince, the founder of the mercenary company Blackwater; and Ben Shaffer, a local SWAT sniper who was part of security at the July 13 rally.
Kelly and other task force members expressed frustration at the alternative investigation by Republican Reps. Corey Mills, Eli Crane, Matt Gaetz, Clay Higgins and Chip Roy. Mills announced the “parallel independent investigation” the same day the official task force was formed and he was not included, describing his omission as “unfortunate.” He said he would “personally fund” his probe.
“I would love for them to wait until we finally find out what really has happened, as opposed to getting out early,” Kelly told the Daily Mail tabloid on Monday. “Getting out early is all right, as long as you know when you get out there, what you're saying is actually what took place.”