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Members of the House task force to lead a bipartisan investigation into the Trump assassination attempt

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Former President Donald Trump is escorted off the stage by the Secret Service on July 13 after a shooting during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. A House task force was convened on Monday to investigate the attempted murder. Photo by David Maxwell/EPA-EFE
Police snipers stationed themselves on a rooftop overlooking former President Donald Trump’s arrival at a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. During the campaign rally, Trump was dragged off the stage by the Secret Service after being shot in the ear. Photo by David Maxwell/EPA-EFE
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) pose for a photo before a closed session at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on March 12. On Monday, Johnson and Jeffries announced House members’ support for a bipartisan task force to investigate the Trump assassination. File photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI
U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testified during a House Oversight Committee hearing on the Secret Service and the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 22. Cheatle resigned from her post the following day. Photo by Jemal Countess/UPI
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on Wednesday. Wray was asked about a whistleblower’s allegations that the FBI’s security division took politically motivated disciplinary action against him. Photo: Ken Cedeno/UPI

July 29 (UPI) – House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Monday announced the 13 members who will lead a bipartisan task force investigating the recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

The seven Republican members of the task force include Chairman Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, who represents the site of the assassination, as well as Mark Green of Tennessee, David Joyce of Ohio, Laurel Lee of Florida, Michael Waltz of Florida, Clay Higgins of Louisiana and Pat Fallon of Texas.

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The six Democratic members of the task force include the ranking member, Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, Rep. Lou Correa of ​​California, Rep. Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Rep. Glenn Ivey of Maryland and Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida.

“We have complete confidence in this bipartisan group of trusted, highly qualified and capable members of Congress to quickly uncover the facts, hold those responsible to account and help ensure that such failures never happen again,” Republicans Johnson of Louisiana and Jeffries of New York said in a statement Monday as they announced the names of the defendants.

The creation of the task force was approved unanimously by a vote of 416 to 0 in the House of Representatives last week. The Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump will investigate the July 13 shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania, where a gunman punched the former president in the ear, killing one man and wounding two other people.

Despite security measures for the event, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks managed to climb to a nearby roof with an AR-15-style weapon and fire several shots at the president before he was killed by the Secret Service.

The formation of the House task force also came less than a week after Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle announced her resignation.

“The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders and financial infrastructure. On July 13, we failed in that mission,” Cheatle wrote in her resignation letter. “The surveillance over the past week has been intense and will continue to be so as our operating temperature rises. As your Director, I take full responsibility for the security breach.”

One day before her resignation, Cheatle was questioned at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. FBI Director Christopher Wray also testified that they still had “no clear picture” of the shooter’s motive or possible accomplices.

“There doesn’t seem to be a lot of interaction between him and a lot of people, either in person or digitally,” Wray said, adding, “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any.”

The new task force will take control of all House committee investigations into the Trump assassination attempt. It will be tasked with finding out “what went wrong,” “ensuring accountability,” “preventing such agency failures from ever happening again,” and “recommending reforms.”

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