The House passed a resolution to form a bipartisan task force on Wednesday to investigate the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump on July 13.
H.R. 1367, which was spearheaded by House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, passed the House in a unanimous vote. The task force was announced in the aftermath of U.S. Secret Service (USSS) Director Kimberly Cheatle’s evasive testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Monday, which sparked bipartisan outrage and her subsequent resignation on Tuesday.
The House voted 416-0 on the resolution.
“The security failures that allowed an assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life are shocking,” Johnson and Jeffries said in a joint statement on Tuesday. “The task force will be empowered with subpoena authority and will move quickly to find the facts, ensure accountability, and make certain such failures never happen again.”
The task force will be composed of seven Republicans and six Democrats “in response to bipartisan demands for answers,” according to Johnson and Jeffries’ joint statement.
The resolution was also led by Republican Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, who was in the front row of Trump’s rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania, when 20-year old Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at and wounded the former president, killing attendee Corey Comperatore and injuring James Copenhaver and David Dutch, who are both in stable condition as of Monday.
Crooks took aim at the Republican nominee from a rooftop positioned just 130 yards from the stage. The gunman was reportedly spotted by witnesses and flagged by the USSS almost an hour before Trump took the stage.
Cheatle resigned the day after her testimony on Monday, saying that she took “full responsibility for the security lapse,” according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. Johnson said Cheatle’s resignation was “overdue,” but that there still “may be others in the line of authority” who were also at fault.
“She should have done this at least a week ago,” Johnson said in a press conference on Tuesday. “Now we have to pick up the pieces. We have to rebuild the American people’s faith and trust in the Secret Service as an agency.”
