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 FBI Director Chris Wray.
Former President Donald Trump was shot at at a Butler, Pa. 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.
After different committees, House and Senate members all tried to demand information on the momentous tragedy, the task force notified the agency heads that its own request should ‘supersede’ any other member of Congress’s.
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.
Hellbound and Down 