House leadership on Monday named the 13 members of the bipartisan congressional task force that would seek to examine the root causes of the failures that allowed a shooter to gain access to former President Donald Trump and narrowly miss him in an assassination attempt earlier this month.
Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Mike Kelly, who has said he was 50 feet away from Trump when the July 13 shooting started, will serve as chair of the group that comprises seven Republicans and six Democrats.
“In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, I heard calls from both sides of the aisle to lower the political temperature, to tamp down the rhetoric. I echo these calls,” Kelly wrote Friday in a Newsweek op-ed. “My hope is that, by establishing the task force, we will shine a light on the facts that so many Americans have been desperately seeking.”
The assassination attempt took place in his hometown of Butler, where he has long-standing ties to the local law enforcement community, and he wrote the resolution the House adopted last week to establish the task force, according to a press release announcing the membership of the panel. The panel will have lawmakers with diverse backgrounds and some members who have histories of scrapping with the opposing party, although none of the most vocal firebrands.
The Republican members will be Kelly and Reps. Mark E. Green of Tennessee, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee; David Joyce of Ohio; Laurel Lee and Michael Waltz of Florida.; Clay Higgins of Louisiana; and Pat Fallon of Texas.
The ranking member will be Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a former Army Ranger who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and is on the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees.
The other Democratic members are Lou Correa of California, Madeleine Dean and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Glenn F. Ivey of Maryland and Jared Moskowitz of Florida.
Crow said in a statement he intends to use the opportunity of the task force to “conduct a thorough bipartisan investigation to collect the facts and recommend corrective security measures.”
“I will help lead this bipartisan task force with Chairman Kelly to investigate and fully examine the attempted assassination of former President Trump, and I will treat it like what it is: a solemn, urgent, and necessary responsibility,” Crow said. “The American people deserve clear answers and assurances that we will not let this happen again.”
Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said in a joint statement the task force will get to the bottom of Secret Service’s inability to protect the Republican presidential nominee.
“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,” Johnson and Jeffries said.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned in the wake of the firestorm over her agency’s failure to protect Trump.
The task force is charged with three goals: understand what went wrong on the day of the attempted assassination; ensure accountability; and prevent such an agency failure from ever happening again, according to a statement announcing the membership of the panel.
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