Sen. Marshall: Expand Trump Assassination Attempt Probe

(AP)

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., has requested that the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General expand its investigation of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump during a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The IG’s office had been investigating several aspects of the assassination attempt made by Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who shot Trump in the right ear, killed a spectator and seriously injured two others before he was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper.

Marshall recently wrote a letter to Joseph Cuffari asking that his office broaden its investigation to include allegations that requests from the Trump campaign for additional assets were denied by the Secret Service, how the agency assigns duties and responsibilities for protective details, and agency attrition within the past four years, the Washington Examiner reported Monday.

“USSS protection procedures are not transparent to the American people, even following two recent Congressional hearings during which my colleagues and I posed probing questions to the USSS Director and Acting Director, only to receive unsatisfactory nonanswers,” Marshall wrote, according to the Examiner.

The IG’s office had been investigating the Secret Service’s process for securing the campaign event, the preparedness of the counter-sniper team to respond to such threats, and whether the planning and implementation were adequate enough to ensure the safety and security of designated protectees, the Examiner reported. It is unknown whether the office had been examining the aspects contained in Marshall’s letter.

At least five Secret Service agents were put on administrative leave last month, including the head of the Pittsburgh field office that worked security for the Pennsylvania rally with local police, three others from the same office, and a member of Trump’s detail. The incident led to the resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle.

“Nearly two months after an assassination attempt that left President Trump within centimeters of his life, there are still no answers or accountability for the Secret Service’s failures that day,” Marshall, who sits on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement to the Examiner. “Instead, they have stonewalled our inquiries, and to our knowledge, no one has been fired for top-down mistakes made. This is unacceptable from an agency once respected as one of the nation’s top law enforcement bureaus — they’ve lost the public’s trust.”

Newsmax reached out to the IG’s office for comment.