Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said the bipartisan group of experts would get to the bottom of decisions that allowed a gunman to wound the former president at a rally in Pennsylvania.
The homeland security secretary, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, on Sunday announced the members of a panel to conduct an independent review into security failures after a gunman was able to wound former President Donald J. Trump last weekend at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa.
The Secret Service, which answers to Mr. Mayorkas, is facing criticism for its decisions in planning security for the event, and Republican leaders have called for the agency’s director, Kimberly A. Cheatle, to resign. Mr. Mayorkas’s announcement on Sunday promised that the panel would get to the bottom of what went wrong and what changes the Secret Service should make to protect the country’s leaders.
“This independent review will examine what happened and provide actionable recommendations to ensure they carry out their no-fail mission most effectively and to prevent something like this from ever happening again,” Mr. Mayorkas said in a statement.
The panel — described by Mr. Mayorkas as bipartisan — that will be conducting the 45-day review will be made up of Janet Napolitano, a former homeland security secretary; Frances Townsend, a former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush; Mark Filip, a former federal judge and a deputy attorney general under Mr. Bush; and David Mitchell, a former secretary of the Delaware Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security. Mr. Mayorkas said he could invite additional experts to join the panel in the coming days.
Ms. Cheatle said in a statement on Sunday that she was eager to cooperate with the review.
The announcement comes as Mr. Mayorkas is under scrutiny for his handling of the events surrounding the assassination attempt, especially whether he has been able to get adequate answers from Ms. Cheatle. Her tenure grew more tenuous over the weekend after the Secret Service revised public comments that it had not denied requests for additional security for Mr. Trump the past two years.
Ms. Cheatle is expected to testify on Monday before the House Oversight Committee and will face a barrage of questions about the Secret Service’s decisions before, during and immediately after the failed assassination on July 13. It is likely to be a pivotal moment in the search for what happened at the campaign rally and how federal law enforcement was unable to protect the former president.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
