Congress Leaders Agree to Form Task Force on Trump Assassination Attempt
Speaker Mike Johnson and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, have struck a deal to form a bipartisan task force to lead the congressional investigations into the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump.
The two leaders planned to announce their deal for the task force, which would be led by Republicans who control the House but would be nearly evenly divided between them and Democrats, later Tuesday morning.
“The security failures that allowed an assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life are shocking,” Mr. Johnson, of Louisiana, and Mr. Jeffries, of New York, said in a joint statement. “The task force will be empowered with subpoena authority and will move quickly to find the facts, ensure accountability, and make certain such failures never happen again.”
The task force, which they said was being stood up “in response to bipartisan demands for answers,” is to be made up of seven Republicans and six Democrats. That is an uncommonly narrow split in the House, where the majority usually gives itself a substantial partisan edge on committees to ensure that its side maintains a firm grip on power.
When the Democratic-led House formed a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, for instance, Democrats initially gave themselves eight seats and Republicans five — though the G.O.P. largely boycotted that panel, and only two Republicans ended up serving on it.
Legislation to form the task force to investigate the Trump assassination attempt is expected to be approved by the full House on Wednesday. The goal would be to detail exactly what went wrong during the attempted assassination, ensure accountability and prevent such a failure from happening again.
At the completion of its investigation, the task force would recommend reforms to government agencies and potentially legislation.
The investigation of the assassination attempt has become a rare issue of bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill. On Monday, the top Republican and Democrat on the Oversight Committee sent a joint letter calling on the Secret Service director to resign after a hearing in which members of both parties were harshly critical of her leadership.
