Former President Trump waved his fist as he rushed off the stage at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024.
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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Merrokas has appointed a panel of experts to conduct an independent review of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
The panel included Janet Napolitano, the Obama-era homeland security secretary; Fran Townsend, the homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush; and former federal judge Mark Filip, Former Deputy Attorney General under Bush; David Mitchell, former Maryland State Police Commissioner and former Delaware Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security. Additional experts may be appointed to the group in the coming days.
“We are committed to finding the truth about what happened on July 13, and I am grateful to the distinguished members of this independent review who will bring decades of law enforcement and security operations expertise to this important investigation,” Mayorkas said. Knowledge.
The news comes in the wake of an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on Saturday that left one person dead and two others seriously injured. Secret Service agents shot and killed the gunman.
“There was a real failure on Saturday,” Mayorkas, who oversees the Secret Service, told NPR last week.
The problem is that Trump was attacked by a gunman even though he received extra Secret Service protection due to threats from an alleged Iranian plot against him. The role of the Secret Service and whether local police did enough to stop the gunman, as well as the security surrounding the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, are also under scrutiny. Bill Pickle, a former deputy assistant director of the Secret Service, said the decision not to cover the building from where he fired, about 130 yards from where Trump was speaking, allowed the gunman to open fire.
“I think this is more of a human error than a boundary issue,” Pickell said. “To me, the perimeter really just avoids the fact that there’s not enough coverage or resources to prevent this from happening.”
Any oversights may include individual mistakes made in gathering security planning. Former Secret Service Director William Basham said that before such events, a Secret Service advance agent would stand at the podium where the president sits and get a 360-degree view of what needs to be reported. During this process, it was decided not to directly cover the roof of the filming location.
“There was a communication failure,” he said. “There’s a glitch in the security plan, someone should be on the roof. I just don’t think there’s much mystery to what’s going on here.
MPs are launching their own investigation into the incident. Congress has expressed concerns about the Secret Service in the past, and lawmakers are expected to receive briefings in the coming days. The House Oversight Committee is expected to hear testimony from Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle when Congress returns on Monday.
