Bipartisan Task Force Probes Attempt On Former President Trump

The bipartisan task force created to investigate the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump is getting to work.

Republicans and Democrats were shocked at how close a gunman came to taking the former president’s life and have shown unanimity in working to make sure it never happens again.

The U.S. House voted 416-0 last month in agreeing to create the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump.

It's composed of 13 members: seven Republicans and six Democrats. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) chose Pennsylvania's Mike Kelly, who's from Butler. to chair the task force, while Colorado's Jason Crow is its ranking member.

"The task force that we'll be putting together is going to be very important," Speaker Johnson told reporters before the vote. As laid out in the legislation, the group has three responsibilities: investigate what happened, hold those responsible accountable, and ensure the same mistakes can't be made again.

Chairman Kelly says the task force may hold some hearings this fall to showcase its findings, but the initial step taken Monday morning as to send out two letters, one to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, and the other to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

The letters notify them that "the Task Force’s requests now supersede all other requests" regarding the incident, formally request "all documents and information that have been produced to date," and "request a briefing" on all that they've learned so far.

The head of the Secret Service, Kim Cheatle, resigned a week and half after the incident and a day after being grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, but more changes seem likely. Oklahoma Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-OK2), who was part of a House Homeland Security Committee site visit last month, says the task force needs to get to the root cause of the breakdown.

"If it’s not personnel, then it’s procedures," Brecheen said in an interview after returning from Pennsylvania, "and those procedures need to change. If it’s personnel or poor choices, we need to find out why those poor choices are being made."

The bill that created the task force set a deadline of December 13 for the task force to issue a final report, including any recommended legislative changes to prevent future security lapses.