Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on July 15 said that the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump “cannot happen,” adding that President Joe Biden has initiated an independent review into the matter.
In a separate interview with ABC News, Mr. Mayorkas, whose agency oversees the Secret Service, said that “a direct line of sight like that to the former president should not occur,” referring to the now-deceased shooter’s targeting of former President Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
“That’s why president Biden directed an independent review of the incident,” he added.
Law enforcement officials have said that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired on the former president with an AR-style rifle from a distance of about 400 feet away, striking former President Trump in the ear, killing one spectator, and injuring two others. In a new interview, the former president said he believes that a slight turn of his head while he was speaking saved his life.
The FBI has not publicly said whether it has identified a motive for the shooting, although the bureau has said it has opened up a domestic terrorism investigation into the matter.
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Also on Monday morning, U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle released a lengthy statement noting that U.S. Secret Service agents “moved quickly” during the shooting and killed the shooter.
The agency director said that the Secret Service is working with state, local, and federal agencies to figure out what happened and how to better implement security measures to prevent future attempts on targets.
“We will also work with the appropriate Congressional committees on any oversight action,” her statement said.
Ms. Cheatle also said that the Secret Service is “tasked with the tremendous responsibility of protecting the current and former leaders of our democracy” and added that it is a “responsibility that I take incredibly seriously.”
“Theres [sic] an untrue assertion that a member of the former President’s team requested additional security resources & that those were rebuffed. This is absolutely false. In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi wrote in a July 14 social media post.
An FBI special agent in charge of investigating the assassination attempt also pushed back on those claims in a news conference. “There was no additional request for security that was ever denied by the FBI,” Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the bureau’s Pittsburgh-area office, said on July 13.
Mr. Mayorkas delivered a similar message in response to the claims on Monday. “That’s a baseless and irresponsible statement and is one that is unequivocally false,” he told CNN.
As for former President Trump, he thanked the Secret Service for their protective efforts just hours after surviving the assassination attempt, while a similar message was issued by former First Lady Melania Trump.
Several top House Republicans immediately vowed to hold investigations into the matter. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said he would be requesting Ms. Cheatle to testify in front of his panel, according to a letter he sent to the agency director.
The Epoch Times contacted the Secret Service for additional comment Monday.
