Representatives Mike Kelly and Jason Crow lead task force on shooting at Trump rally

Republican Rep. Mike Kelly (Pa.), who represents Butler County and has ties to law enforcement in the region, was appointed chairman of the panel. He will be joined by Republican Reps. Mark Green (Tennessee), David Joyce (Ohio), Laurel Lee (Florida), Michael Waltz (Florida), Clay Higgins (Louisiana) and Pat Fallon (Texas).

From across the aisle, Rep. Jason Crow (Colorado), a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was named the panel’s ranking Democrat. The other members are Democratic Reps. Lou Correa (California), Madeleine Dean (Panama), Chrissy Houlahan (Panama), Glenn Ivey (Maryland) and Jared Moskowitz (Florida).

“We have complete confidence in this bipartisan group of trusted, highly qualified and capable members of Congress to quickly uncover the facts, ensure accountability and help ensure that such failures are never repeated,” Johnson and Jeffries said in a joint statement.

They said the task force could issue subpoenas and would take control of any House committee investigation into the assassination.

In a deeply polarized Congress, similar commissions have had mixed results in recent years. But so far, lawmakers have shown an unusually serious and cooperative approach to investigating the attempted assassination of Trump, the former president and Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election. Republicans protested the last high-level select committee formed by a Democratic-led House to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. It ultimately included only two Republicans.

The three main goals of this panel are to clarify the security and communications problems that allowed 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks to open fire from a rooftop just outside the security perimeter of the outdoor rally; to ensure accountability; and to prevent future Secret Service failures. The last shooting of a U.S. politician under Secret Service protection occurred in 1981, when a gunman shot President Ronald Reagan as he left a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton.

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe and Deputy FBI Director Paul Abbate are scheduled to hold a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

In the days since the shooting, lawmakers have expressed frustration over the Secret Service’s lack of detailed information.

A day after a contentious appearance before the House Oversight Committee last week, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned from her post. FBI Director Christopher A. Wray provided a more detailed account of the assassination attempt in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, but also angered some lawmakers by saying Trump was injured by either a bullet or shrapnel. The bureau later clarified that investigators believe Trump was injured by either a bullet or bullet fragment.

Ivey, a former assistant U.S. attorney who sits on two of the House committees that have already launched investigations into the shooting, said the task force needed to quickly gather information from multiple sources to put together a comprehensive report on what happened that day. During a visit to the crime scene in Butler, Pennsylvania, after the shooting, Ivey said he found local law enforcement officials and people on the ground who were “more than willing to share what they found.”

A former U.S. government official with experience investigating major security incidents in the past said lawmakers should focus on developing an independent timeline to compare with the official protection plan the Secret Service had drawn up before the rally.

This will help members determine “whether the plan itself was wrong, whether they neglected the scope of protection or whether someone did not do their job – and why,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to be able to speak openly about sensitive security issues.

Since the assassination, intelligence officials have encouraged Trump’s campaign to avoid large outdoor rallies, the Washington Post reported last week. But Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social over the weekend that he would continue to hold such rallies.