Parallel Trump shooting investigations launch with dueling events

Dueling Monday events focused on the assassination attempt against former President Trump highlighted the challenge that the official House task force investigating the attack could have in keeping the effort bipartisan and apolitical.

In its first in-person and public official action, members of the bipartisan task force toured the Butler, Pa., Farm Show site where Trump’s July 13 rally and shooting took place, stressing the importance of carefully assessing the facts from a neutral perspective.

“There’s not one person on this conference that’s identifying as just a Republican or a Democrat. We’re identifying as members of Congress on a task force with a task to restore the faith and trust and confidence the American people have to have in our system,” Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), the chair of the task force who represents Butler, said in a press conference after the tour.

But back in Washington, D.C., a group of rabble-rousing House Republicans — including some who were disappointed to not be included in the official House task force — held a forum at the Heritage Foundation on the assassination attempt that raised questions about whether political motivations led to security failures surrounding the July 13 rally.

It was the first major showing of the independent investigation that Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) and Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) — two former military snipers who had themselves visited the rally site and tried to gather information — had promised to pursue after neither of them were selected to sit on the official task force.

The hearing-style forum featured Blackwater founder and former Navy SEAL Erik Prince; conservative radio host and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino; and Ben Shaffer, a Washington regional SWAT operator who was onsite at the rally. In addition to Mills and Crane, Republican Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.) and Chip Roy (Texas) participated in the forum, while Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) attended in the audience.

Mills said that Monday’s event “will not be the last” for the independent effort.

“This is a message to all of Congress that if we are not selecting people based on meritocracy, that independent investigations such as this will continue to move forward, that there are members who are conservatives who will not be silenced,” Mills said in his opening remarks. 

Crane told The Hill that while he respects those on the official task force, whose members were appointed after careful coordination with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), he said it “was put together politically,” making him question whether the House panel would make decisions based on politics itself.

Yet it was the independent forum that veered into potential political explanations for the security breakdowns that allowed 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks to fire from a roof at Trump, injuring him, killing one rally attendee and leaving two others critically injured.

“It appears that for the first time in American history, we have a Secret Service that is making decisions that may not be all political, but may have a political tinge to it,” Bongino said, commenting on the Secret Service’s reasoning for declining previous Trump campaign requests for additional security. Bongino also alleged that the Secret Service is “dominated” by diversity, equity and inclusion considerations when making major decisions. 

Roy asked repeatedly if various security failures could be chalked up to “mere incompetence.”

The forum did not produce new major revelations about the security posture surrounding the shooting, but it did highlight security breakdowns at the event.

Ben Shaffer — who was in a counter-sniper role the day of the event but said he never had Crooks in his sector of responsibility or his field of vision — talked about communications problems and how lack of drone coverage “severely” impacted the ability to secure the event and venue.

Crane said that the goal of the independent probe is “to move as quickly as we can, because the American people don’t want to see this memory-holed.”

The official task force has a much different outlook. 

“Getting to the truth is a slow process. And for us, none of us are looking at it as we have to get a quick answer. We’re looking at it as we have to get the right answer,” Kelly said.

And as the congressional probes move forward, the official task force will have the only authority in the House to issue subpoenas.

At the tour, in Butler, Pa., several task force members commented on how being there in person gave them a better sense of how close the building from which the shooter fired was to the rally.

“It reminds me, quite frankly, how outrageous it was that the Secret Service director did not come here to get a sense of what this looked like,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said, referring to an admission from former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle during a contentious House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing in July. Cheatle resigned the following day.

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), the ranking member on the task force, recalled his experience as an Army ranger that him taught to secure the high ground, or to have eyes on the high ground.

“I definitely took note today that there were a lot of lines of sight that appear to have been unsecured that day, that didn’t have eyes on or that weren’t secured,” Crow said in the press conference.

There is likely to be overlap between the independent effort and the task force.

Shaffer told The Hill that he is also in contact with the official panel, but that he chose to speak out at the independent panel out of concern that “lack of information can cause more issues than providing facts and information.”