WASHINGTON – U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson announced Tuesday that a bipartisan task force created to investigate the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in July will be expanded to include the suspected attack on the Republican presidential candidate’s golf club in Florida that took place over the weekend.
“We in Congress have a responsibility to get to the bottom of this, to find out why these things are happening and what we can do about it,” Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said in a statement.
Johnson said he had spoken to the White House and pushed for Trump to receive the same U.S. intelligence protection as a sitting president.
“He is under constant threat,” Johnson said of Trump.
While Trump was not injured in the second possible assassination attempt, he suffered an injury to his ear during a July shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“He’s in the middle of a heated campaign, and that’s an obvious thing we need to do now,” Johnson said. “In the meantime, Congress will do everything we can to make sure that happens. And one of the things we’re going to do is expand the scope of the existing task force to cover the second assassination attempt.”
This task force, led by Republican U.S. Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania and Democratic U.S. Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, Tuesday demanded the Justice Department and the FBI to inform MPs about the possible assassination attempt by Friday.
The suspect in the Florida incident, Ryan Wesley Routh, was arraigned in federal court on Monday of possessing a firearm as a convicted felon and obscuring the serial number of a firearm, according to court records.
Acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ron Rowe said Monday that Routh did not fire his weapon.
Rowe said that since the July 13 assassination attempt, U.S. intelligence has “helped further enhance the already heightened security situation for the former president.”
He added that President Joe Biden “has made it clear that he wants the greatest possible protection for former President Trump.”
“The Secret Service has taken steps to maintain its increased resources and the level of protection it seeks, and those measures were implemented yesterday,” Rowe said of Sunday’s incident.
