The Biden-Harris administration is refusing to forfeit information relevant to the first assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, a newly released bipartisan Senate report alleges.
Published on Wednesday by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the interim analysis documents the massive security breakdown by the Secret Service (USSS) during the July 13 attempt on Trump’s life in Butler County, Pennsylvania. The investigation was spearheaded by Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Gary Peters, D-Mich., Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
Among the notable takeaways from the report are allegations that relevant agencies within the Biden-Harris administration are refusing to provide records necessary to the committee’s investigation.
The analysis noted that “key requests to [the Federal Bureau of Investigation] FBI, [Department of Homeland Security] DHS, [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] ATF and USSS remain outstanding.” It specifically highlighted how the “majority of documents provided by the USSS and DHS are heavily redacted.”
“This has unnecessarily hindered the Committee’s ability to carry out its constitutional authority to investigate and acquire information necessary to identify needed reforms,” the report reads. “These overly burdensome redactions, including of communications related to the same individuals who the Committee interviewed, only served to delay the Committee’s ability to conduct these interviews and carry out its investigation efficiently and effectively.”
The senators described a recent incident in which the committee issued a letter to USSS Acting Director Ronald Rowe taking issue with “the timing of document production and the number of redactions applied to the records” released by the agency. The response purportedly offered by DHS’s assistant secretary for legislation that same day “did not adequately address the committee’s concerns,” according to the report.
The analysis further alleged that USSS officials “responsible for planning and security” for Trump’s July 13 rally “provided contradictory or incomplete information, some of which ran counter to responses from state and local law enforcement officials and even other USSS personnel.”
“There is still much more information that the public and Congress deserve to know,” Johnson said in a statement. “Going forward, this Committee must be prepared to use compulsory process to ensure that the American people have a complete and thorough understanding of the security failures that resulted in the multiple attempts on former President Trump’s life.”
Wednesday’s release of the report comes more than a week after a separate individual attempted to kill Trump at the former president’s West Palm Beach golf course. Gov. Ron DeSantis tasked the Florida Attorney General’s Office of Statewide Prosecution and other state agencies with conducting an independent investigation into the matter, although the state’s efforts are being stonewalled by the Biden-Harris administration, according to the governor.
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