As the country reckons with the fallout of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday, the U.S. Secret Service has come under intense scrutiny for allowing the would-be killer to carry a rifle to within a few hundred feet of the podium where Trump was speaking.
Members of the Biden administration and senior lawmakers in Congress have said they will demand answers from the agency, which has the primary responsibility to protect current and former presidents, their families and other senior U.S. government officials.
The Department of Homeland Security has oversight of the Secret Service. Monday, the department Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas described the attack as “a failure” by the agency.
Members of Congress, and particularly Trump’s Republican allies in the House of Representatives, vowed to get answers from the agency, scheduling hearings and demanding information from the agency.
James Comer, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, wrote on X that “Americans have questions after the assassination attempt of President Trump in Pennsylvania.” He said his committee “is working to get answers.”
Extremely close
In the moments before the attack, Trump was speaking at a campaign rally on an outdoor stage in Butler, Pennsylvania. The rally was held inside a secured area, but just outside of the security perimeter, the roof of a single-story building offered a clear line of sight to the podium.
Eyewitness reports and video from the scene indicate that a few minutes after Trump began speaking, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks scrambled onto the roof carrying an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle. Crooks took up a shooting position about 137 meters from the podium. The effective range of the rifle, millions of which are in the hands of U.S. civilians, is greater than 457 meters.
Onlookers warned nearby law enforcement officers of Crooks’ presence on the building nearly two minutes before the attack. However, despite the presence of four counter-sniper teams on the scene, Crooks was able to fire several shots, slightly wounding the former president in the right ear, killing one rally attendee and critically injuring two others before he was killed by gunfire from a Secret Service sniper.
The attack was the first time a current or former U.S. president has been injured by a would-be assassin since Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981, an attack he survived.
House investigations coming
In an appearance Sunday on NBC, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson vowed that lawmakers would demand information about the security arrangements that allowed the attack to take place.
“Congress will do a full investigation of the tragedy … to determine where there were lapses in security and anything else that the American people need to know and deserve to know,” Johnson said.
Comer told Fox News on Monday that he had scheduled a July 22 hearing at which he expects Secret Service Director Kimberly A. Cheatle to testify. He said that in the week between now and then, he expects Cheatle to have gathered significant information about the circumstance of the attack.
Homeland Security and intelligence
According to news reports, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green spoke with Cheatle on Sunday and demanded that she supply his committee with extensive documentation related to the incident.
Green also sent a letter to Mayorkas that said, in part, “The seriousness of this security failure and chilling moment in our nation’s history cannot be understated. This raises serious concerns regarding how a shooter was able to access a rooftop within range and direct line of sight of where President Trump was speaking.”
A third investigation is expected to be undertaken by the House Intelligence Committee. On Sunday, committee Chairman Mike Turner appeared on CNN and praised the dedication of the Secret Service agents, several of whom shielded Trump with their own bodies as he was led away from the podium on Saturday.
However, he said that in the aftermath of the shooting, many questions need to be answered.
“The fact that we’re hearing that people knew that there was a man on this roof with a gun and were trying to get police attention while the president was up at the podium is just incredibly cause for concern, and I think very frustrating for everyone, because we believe that our presidents and former presidents, our candidates for presidents, have the highest degree of protection, and something so simple seems to have been lost,” Turner said.
Senate response
On the Senate side of the Capitol, where Democrats are in control, lawmakers were also taking steps to examine the assassination attempt.
The Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs announced Monday it would launch an investigation. Chairman Gary Peters and Ranking Member Rand Paul sent a joint letter to senior administration officials requesting their appearance.
Also on Monday, the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee “urgently” requested that Democratic committee Chair Dick Durbin schedule a hearing.
“There is much unknown about this attempted assassination, but its occurrence raises alarming questions and concerns,” they wrote in a letter to Durbin.
“We are grateful for the bravery and selflessness of the Secret Service agents and other law enforcement officers on the scene, but we must get to the bottom of how the would-be assassin was able to access a nearby rooftop with a rifle and a line of sight to President Trump,” they wrote. “The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has an obligation to exercise its jurisdiction and oversight authority over the United States Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to shed light on this grave matter.”
More heated rhetoric
While many senior Republicans on Capitol Hill responded to the attack with sober statements and calls to allow officials to continue gathering information, others were quicker to apportion blame. A number attacked Democrats, saying that rhetoric describing a second Trump presidency as a threat to American democracy had raised the potential for violence.
Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who Trump named as his running mate on Monday, used a post on X to tie the shooting directly to President Joe Biden.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” he said.
Vance offered no proof, and law enforcement officials investigating the attack have so far uncovered no obvious motive for the shooter, a registered Republican, to try to kill the Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee.
The prospective vice president was not the only Republican to blame Biden. Representative Mike Collins of Georgia also wrote on X, “Joe Biden sent the orders” to the shooter.
Secret Service to cooperate
After the shooting, Biden announced he would call for an independent review of the Secret Service’s handling of the rally, a call echoed by Mayorkas.
In a statement released Monday, Cheatle said her agency would cooperate with all investigations.
“We understand the importance of the independent review announced by President Biden yesterday and will participate fully,” the statement said. “We will also work with the appropriate Congressional committees on any oversight action.”
