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Donald Trump was nearly assassinated on July 13. The grotesque attempt on the former president’s life came shockingly close amid a string of failures to adequately protect him.
Even as some initial congressional inquiries and hearings have uncovered additional facts, many questions remain about the gaps in security and communication that allowed a 20-year-old shooter to get up on a building and shoot at Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Rally attendee Corey Comperatore was tragically killed, Trump was injured in the ear, and two other members of the crowd were seriously injured.
Immediately after the shooting and as questions have lingered, conspiracy theories and misinformation have taken hold. We live in an America divided not only by differing views, but often by different sources of information and different sets of facts. This makes it absolutely vital that the country have a unified, comprehensive review of the security failures — one that can be trusted by Republicans and Democrats alike, and not easily maligned as the spin of a single administration or agency.
So it was a very positive step that U.S. House of Representatives leaders were able to come together on a bipartisan basis to form the 13-member task force that is now reviewing the assassination attempt. The bill creating that task force passed by a vote of 416-0 in late July.
“We have the utmost confidence in this bipartisan group of steady, highly qualified and capable members of Congress to move quickly to find the facts, ensure accountability and help make certain such failures never happen again,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a joint statement.
That leaders, and the entire House, rallied around this bipartisan investigation was no sure thing in the current political climate. It didn’t happen this way with the panel to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, for instance. The fact that leaders and other members of Congress subscribed to a collaborative approach here is ultimately very good for the country, and very good for the prospects of the fact-finding mission.
The top Republican and Democrat leading the panel have matched that encouraging spirit with their approach and comments thus far.
Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, the chair of the task force, is from Butler and was actually at the shooting when it happened with members of his family, including three of his grandchildren. Despite this intense personal experience, Kelly has still demonstrated a measured approach to the review focusing on the facts and eschewing partisan hyperbole.
“I look at it as 13 members of the House of Representatives, not seven Republicans and six Democrats,” Kelly told The New York Times about the task force recently. “These are all serious, serious people. They’re not looking for a spotlight. They’re looking to shed some light on what happened on July 13.”
U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, the Democratic leader on the task force, made similar remarks to the Times.
“We want this to be less theatrical,” Crow said, as opposed to the more polarized proceedings so often seen in the House.
The panel’s 13 members face a tight turnaround time, with their final report due by Dec. 13. Their work began officially this week by requesting documents from several federal agencies, including the Secret Service and FBI. They are tasked with working to understand what went wrong on the day of the attempted assassination, ensuring accountability and making sure something like this doesn’t happen again. This is a critical mission, and there is no time for partisan theatrics.
