House task force report says Trump assassination attempt was ‘preventable’

The House task force on the attempted assassination of former President Trump detailed flaws in the planning and security surrounding Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pa., in an interim staff report released Monday. 

Lack of adequate planning, a narrow field of vision for local snipers, the absence of a unified command post and fragmented communication were among the main findings in the 53-page report that examined how 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to climb atop a building with a line of sight to Trump and fire at him. 

“Put simply, the evidence obtained by the Task Force to date shows the tragic and shocking events of July 13 were preventable and should not have happened,” the report said. 

Crooks’s bullet came within inches of killing the former president and injured his ear. Shots also killed one rally attendee and seriously wounded two others. 

The task force report contains many of the same critiques that have previously come to light and is one of multiple probes into the security failures that led to the assassination attempt in July.

Last week, an independent review conducted by a group of four national and state law enforcement officials said the shooting reveals “deep flaws” in the Secret Service, and called for “a new leadership team with significant experience outside the Service.” 

And in September, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee issued a report that found agents had multiple opportunities to prevent Crooks from firing at Trump.  

The latest report also detailed information about Crooks’s autopsy report and the chain of events that led to release of the remains to the Crooks’s family. The Butler County Coroner’s office released the remains after the FBI concurred that no additional evidence was necessary, the report said. 

The autopsy report found that Crooks died from one gunshot wound to the head, found negative results for alcohol or drugs of abuse, but was positive for antimony, selenium, and lead. Heightened levels of lead could have been due to time spent at the shooting range, the Allegheny County Chief Medical Examiner said. 

Focus on the autopsy comes after Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), a member of the panel, independently released a “preliminary investigative report” in August that raised concern about the fact that Crooks’s body was released for cremation 10 days after the shooting. Higgins had attempted to examine Crooks’s body, but said that because he was cremated, he “won’t know 100 percent if the coroner’s report and the autopsy report are accurate.” 

The House force is made up of a bipartisan group of lawmakers and has also been assigned to investigate the September apparent assassination attempt on Trump in at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, Fla. 

“The Task Force will continue to rigorously investigate the July 13 assassination attempt in the coming months,” the report said, adding that it is “in the process of conducting more than 20 transcribed interviews of federal officials and others who may have knowledge relevant to the events of July 13.” 

A final report is due by Dec. 13.

Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement that the agency “appreciates the essential role of congressional oversight and has been fully transparent and cooperative with the House Task Force to determine the factors that led to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on July 13.” 

“Many of the insights gained from the House Task Force report align with the findings from the U.S. Secret Service’s internal mission assurance review and the Senate’s interim July 13^threport and are essential to ensuring that what happened on July 13 never happens again,” Guglielmi  said.

Guglielmi added that Secret Service Acting Director Ron Rowe “has developed a plan for an agency-wide paradigm shift, which focuses on increasing and retaining the agency’s personnel, modernizing our technology, and building a training plan that is sustainable now and into the future.”

Updated at 3:49 p.m.