Pa. congressman continues seeking answers to Trump assassination attempt a year later
The eighth-term Republican, who represents Pennsylvania's 16th Congressional District, said he believes the change in leadership at numerous federal agencies, namely the Secret Service and FBI, since Trump took office in January will lead to better cooperation with members of Congress. The task force claimed in its final report that such cooperation was lacking under Biden administration appointees.
"We can't quit on it because we never got the answers," Kelly said in June in an interview with the USA TODAY Network at his Butler office. "The public deserves to know what happened that day."
The House voted unanimously, 416-0, on July 24 to form the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump.
Over five months, Kelly, ranking member Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colorado, and task force members made multiple trips to the farm show grounds to meet with federal officials and tour the venue and the neighboring business property from where the FBI said gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks had fired the eight shots. They interviewed 46 people, mostly local law enforcement, but also U.S. Secret Service, Pennsylvania State Police and officials from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The task force had a dozen briefings with federal agencies, collected more than 20,000 pages of documents and held two public hearings. Members also visited an FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, and Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, the site of a second assassination attempt that occurred Sept. 15, 2024. Ryan Wesley Routh, 59, of North Carolina, was charged in that attempt.
The report notes that Secret Service "provided significant cooperation" with the task force when it came to turning over documents and making employees available for interviews regarding the July 13 event.
"However, DHS policies restricted certain important documents to in-camera review, and the overclassification of documents hindered the Task Force's investigation," the report says.
The agency would only provide a "substantially limited" briefing and a tour of the West Palm Beach site of the Sept. 15 assassination attempt.
The Biden Department of Justice, FBI and ATF "provided limited cooperation." Also, the FBI would not grant the task force access to any of the individuals within the agency that it requested.
The report includes a four-page list of outstanding requests made by the task force to federal agencies.
Secret Service back to Treasury oversight?
The task force, in its Dec. 13 report, made 37 recommendations, including moving the U.S. Secret Service back under the U.S. Treasury, where it had been until the formation of the Department of Homeland Security following 9/11.
Kelly told the USA TODAY Network he's in the process of drafting legislation.
The agency was formed in 1865 following the Civil War to crack down on counterfeiting. Its most well-known role of protecting U.S. presidents, their families and other government officials didn't begin until 1901, following the assassination of President William McKinley.
When the service was moved under the Department of Homeland Security, it "became the redheaded stepchild," Kelly said.
"If you look at the organizational chart for Homeland, you have to go all the way to the bottom to find Secret Service," he continued. "They're underfunded. Undermanned, underappreciated."
Two New York lawmakers, Reps. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat, and Mike Lawler, a Republican, introduced the Focus on Protection Act in August 2024 to move the duties of investigating financial crimes back to Treasury, while giving the Secret Service the sole responsibility of protecting the president and others.
The idea has been discussed for several years.
Attempted assassination task force findings
The final report contends that the Secret Service and other federal agencies failed in the areas of planning, execution and leadership and that those failures were not limited to the July 13 Butler rally.
The report cites poor leadership and insufficient training of agents. It also notes that agents with "little to no experience in advance planning roles" were put in charge of a "higher-risk outdoor venue" with "line-of-sight issues" and were not given "specific intelligence about a long-range threat."
"Further, some of the Secret Service agents in significant advance planning roles did not clearly understand the delineation of their responsibilities," the report says.
Matthew Rink is a USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania investigative journalist.
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