The new House task force probing the Trump assassination attempt made its first moves on Monday, requesting documents and briefings with agencies involved in investigating the shooting.
Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas and Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe received one letter from committee heads Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Jason Crowe, D-Colo. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBIDirector Chris Wray.
Former President Donald Trumpwas shot at at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally on July 13, 2024. One attendee, Corey Comperatore, was killed and two others were critically injured. A bullet just grazed Trump's ear, drawing blood but causing no real damage.
The task force notified the agency heads that its own request should 'supersede' any other member of Congress after a flurry of information was demanded by House and Senate lawmakers after the momentous tragedy.
The new House task force probing the Trump assassination attempt made its first moves on Monday, requesting documents and briefings with agencies involved in investigating the shooting
It requested briefings from each agency and all documents and evidence that has already been produced to Congress to be rounded up and handed to the task force.
The task force was authorized in a rare unanimous vote in the House and is meant to consolidate numerous investigations that had been launched under differing committees of jurisdiction.
Before that, the House Oversight Committee held a blistering hearing with former Secret Service director Kim Cheatle that prompted her resignation.
Rowe, who took over for Cheatle, told Congress last month that he had no explanation for why the rooftop from which Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight shots was not better secured.
'I went to the roof of the AGR building where the assailant fired shots, and I laid in a prone position to evaluate his line of sight. What I saw made me ashamed as a career law enforcement officer and a 25 year veteran with the Secret Service. I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured,' he told Congress on Tuesday.
'When I laid in that position I could not, will not understand why there was not better coverage or at least somebody looking at that roof line when that's where they were posted,' Rowe said, noting that Crooks' head would have been clearly visible from the unmanned rooftop.
Rowe said when he traveled to Butler he reenacted the shooting to see how well a sniper should have been able to spot Crooks based on the sloping of the roof.
Thirty seconds before Crooks fired his shots, local law enforcement had radioed to Secret Service warning about a man with a rifle on the roof. Around three and a half minutes before that, he'd been 'observed on the roof.'
Law enforcement 'should've been on that roof and the fact that they were in the building is something that I'm still trying to understand,' Rowe said when Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., pressed him on whistleblower reports that law enforcement was supposed to be stationed on the roof but was not up there because it was 'too hot.'
The hearing descended into chaos at one moment when Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asked whether anyone had been fired over the incident.
'Has the person who decided, who made the decision to send Donald Trump on stage knowing that you had a security situation. Has that person been relieved of duty?' Hawley, R-Mo., asked.
'No sir they haven't,' said Rowe.
'Has the person who decided not to pull the former president off of stage when you knew that in your words, the locals were working a serious security situation? Has that person been relieved of duty?'
'No, sir. Again, I refer you back to my original answer that we are investigating this through a mission assurance—' Rowe said.
Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas and Secret Service acting director Ronald Rowe received one letter from committee heads Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Jason Crowe, D-Colo. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI director Chris Wray
'—What more do you need to investigate? To know exactly what you need to investigate to know the failures that something ought to be held accountable? What more do you need to know?' Hawley interjected.
'You're asking me, Senator, to completely make a rush to judgment about somebody failing. I acknowledge this was a failure,' Rowe went on.
'Sir, this could have been our Texas School Book Depository,' he said, in reference to the building from which Lee Harvey Oswald fatally shot President John F. Kennedy.
'I have lost sleep over that for the last 17 days. I will tell you Senator, that I will not rush a judgment, that people will be held accountable, and I will do so with integrity and not rush to judgment and put people unfairly persecuted. We have to be able to have a proper investigation into this.'
