1 of 2 | The U.S. House voted unanimously Wednesday night to create a bipartisan task force to investigate the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump. The vote comes one day after the U.S. Secret Service Director resigned and accepted “full responsibility for the security lapse.” Photo by David Maxwell/EPA-EFE
July 25 (UPI) — The U.S. House voted unanimously Wednesday night to create a bipartisan task force to investigate the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump.
In a rare show of unity, the House voted 416 to 0 to establish a Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump, according to the resolution. It comes less than two weeks after a gunman opened fire from a roof at a Pennsylvania rally where Trump was speaking. The former president was shot in the ear, a man was killed and two others were injured.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., in a show of bipartisan cooperation, announced the Task Force resolution earlier this week, saying it will be made up of six Democrats and seven Republicans to “understand what went wrong” on July 13.
The unanimous vote also comes one day after Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle announced her resignation and accepted “full responsibility for the security lapse.”
On Monday, Cheatle was on Capitol Hill where she faced frustrated Republican and Democratic lawmakers during a House Oversight Committee hearing as they tried to get answers. By the conclusion of Monday’s testimony, the top committee Democrat and its Republican chairman called on Cheatle to resign.
“Today, you failed to provide answers to basic questions regarding that stunning operational failure and to reassure the American people that the Secret Service has learned its lessons and begun to correct its system blunders and failures,” Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and ranking Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland wrote Monday in a letter to Cheatle.
The appointments to the 13-member task force will be announced Thursday, Johnson told CNN, with the work to be done “quickly, efficiently, effectively.”
According to the resolution, the task force will “investigate and fully examine all actions by any agency, department, officer or employee of the federal government, as well as state and local law enforcement or any other state or local government or private entities or individuals, related to the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump on July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pa.”
A final report is expected to be released no later than Dec. 13, and will include “any recommendations for legislative reforms necessary to prevent future security lapses.”
