House Task Force to Probe Butler Shooting

The House task force charged with investigating the near assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, will hold its first hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill. The hearing will focus on local law enforcement and a medical examiner over what happened on July 13, when the former president was shot and one rallygoer was killed.

The hearing comes the day after a bipartisan committee in the Senate released a damning report highlighting key failures by the Secret Service that day, including the lack of decision making and leadership structure.

Those failures, the report said, led to significant lapses in security measures, including a denial of resources and lack of decision making around who was responsible for what area of the rally, including the cluster of buildings the shooter climbed.

The House task force hearing, instead, will focus on local law enforcement and their actions around that day. Witnesses include a local police officer patrolman and sergeant as well as a Pennsylvania State Police officer and medical examiner.

The task force, which was recently expanded by the House to include in its investigation the second attempted assassination of Trump in Florida this month, has previously visited the rally site in Pennsylvania and has met with and interviewed local and federal officers involved in the security and subsequent investigations into that day.

The Secret Service, despite initially blaming local law enforcement for the catastrophe in Butler, has repeatedly said the agency is fully to blame for the failures that day. Questions remain, however, why local officers were not able to stop the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, from climbing on top of a group of nearby building with a rifle, despite prior warnings of Crooks both on the ground and on the rooftop minutes before he began firing. Crooks was killed by Secret Service agents at the scene moments after the shooting.