Since the shocking assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, there have been a multitude of questions raised about the egregious security failures that allowed for the horrific event to unfold as it did. And seemingly, as soon as one question is answered, two more are raised.
There are multiple investigations into the incident being conducted — for good reason. Congress has conducted multiple committee hearings with various law enforcement officials, with more to come. In addition, the House is setting up a bipartisan task force to look into the shooting, and now, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) have announced their picks for the group.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Monday announced the seven Republicans and six Democrats who will sit on the task force to investigate the assassination attempt against former President Trump.
The Republican chair of the panel will be Rep. Mike Kelly (Pa.), who represents Butler, Pa., where the shooting took place and was present in the front row during the rally.
The Democratic ranking member will be Rep. Jason Crow (Colo.), a former Army Ranger and Bronze Star recipient who sits on the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees.
On the Republican side, the task force will also include Reps. Mark Green (Tenn.), the chair of the Homeland Security Committee; David Joyce (Ohio); Laurel Lee (Fla.); Michael Waltz (Fla.); Clay Higgins (La.); and Pat Fallon (Texas).
The five other Democratic appointees are Reps. Lou Correa (Calif.), Madeleine Dean (Pa.), Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.), Glenn Ivey (Md.) and Jared Moskowitz (Fla.).
The announcement of its members follows a unanimous roll call vote Wednesday night to establish the task force.
One concern voiced by some House members ahead of the selection was the possibility of Bennie Thompson (D-MS) being included, not only due to his role with the J6 Committee but because he spearheaded the effort in April to remove Secret Service protection from Trump.
It appears that concern was heeded as Thompson was not named as a task force member. In fact, the Democrat members named have been fairly solid in their committee questioning of law enforcement witnesses thus far, seemingly with the aim of actually obtaining answers and getting to the heart of what went wrong. And if Crow’s name rings a bell, recall it was his exchange with President Joe Biden over combat awards that set off a bit of a firestorm in mid-July.
At the risk of being branded overly optimistic, I’ll simply say that I find the list of task force members somewhat encouraging, and I remain tepidly hopeful that we will indeed have some critical questions answered. At minimum, I expect this task force to be more constructive than the one formed to “investigate” J6.
