Some Republican lawmakers expressed doubt over the ongoing federal investigations into the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump, citing concerns of institutional bias during a Monday forum in Washington, D.C.
The United States Secret Service, FBI and Department of Homeland Security Inspector General launched investigations after 20-year-old gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump during a July 13 rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania from a rooftop positioned just 130 yards away from the stage. Despite these investigations, Republican lawmakers hosting the forum told the Daily Caller News Foundation that they don’t trust the institutional leadership to fairly investigate the shooting.
“I have faith in the rank and file members of the FBI doing an investigation,” Republican Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona told the DCNF. “I have zero faith in the head shed in the leadership of the FBI to actually release the information to the American people.”
“So there’s four investigations going on right now,” Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona told the DCNF. “You got two in the Secret Service, one in the FBI, and you have one from the Inspector General. That’s the only one that I trust. I would trust the Inspector General, which is Inspector General Cuffari. And oddly enough, the establishment of this administration is trying to have him fired.”
During a forum at the Heritage Foundation regarding the assassination attempt, the lawmakers and witnesses recounted the numerous security lapses that transpired on July 13. Dan Bongino, host of the Dan Bongino Show and former Secret Service agent, said that the repeated failures implied that the agencies involved intentionally overlooked valid security concerns.
“How did you not have a roofline 130 yards away secured when you are taught day one in Secret Service training that the effective range of a quality sniper is 1,000 yards?” Bongino asked during the forum.
Crooks was reportedly spotted by witnesses, flagged by Secret Service agents and even identified by a local countersniper over an hour and a half before Trump went on stage. As a result of these security lapses, the shooter was able to injure the former president, kill volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore and injure two attendees, who are both in stable condition.
“I’m sorry,” Bongino continued. “Layered incompetence like that is absolutely intent.”
Crane said he is concerned that the “layered incompetence” and institutional failures that allowed Crooks to come within inches of the former president’s life could have been a result of political bias.
“I think there’s a lot of political bias within most of our major federal institutions,” Crane told the DCNF. “I think there’s a lot of even DEI, woke, cultural Marxist ideology that permeates many of these institutions and leads the leaders of these institutions. Not really to represent the American people at all, but to protect the institution at all costs.”
“I don’t know if there’s any kind of a memo that says, ‘oh, by the way, we’re going to do this,’ right?” Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona told the DCNF. “But one of the things that we tried to bring up today was how system wide this was.”
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said that institutional leaders like FBI Director Christopher Wray’s previous testimonies before lawmakers “doesn’t inspire confidence.”
“Wray testified that he couldn’t see the decline of Joe Biden before his eyes,” Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz told the DCNF. “It doesn’t inspire confidence in his perceptive skills.”
In the weeks after the assassination attempt, lawmakers held numerous hearings to press institutional leaders like Director Wray and then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. Although Cheatle has since resigned, Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida said that they are still pursuing accountability.
“Director Cheatle’s resignation is just the beginning of bringing accountability after the attempted assassination of President Trump,” Luna told the DCNF. “We still need answers from the Secret Service, and we cannot trust the FBI to find the facts for the American people.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries established a task force shortly after the attempted assassination which is composed of seven Republicans and six Democrats. The task force, which passed the House unanimously, took its first investigative action by visiting the site of the shooting in Butler County, Pennsylvania on Monday.
“Congress is working diligently to get the facts, bring accountability, and prevent this from ever happening again,” Johnson said in a statement on X.
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