Three Pennsylvania lawmakers are on the task force investigating Trump’s assassination attempt
Madeleine Dean, Mike Kelly, and Chrissy Houlahan were all named to a bipartisan House task force investigating the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at his Butler County rally.
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Three House members from Pennsylvania have been selected to join a bipartisan task force to investigate the errors that led up to a failed assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
Republican Rep. Mike Kelly and Democratic Reps. Madeleine Dean and Chrissy Houlahan will be part of a group of 13 lawmakers chosen by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.). The task force is scheduled to produce a final report by Dec. 13.
Kelly’s Western Pennsylvania district includes Butler County, where the assassination attempt took place. Dean represents most of Montgomery County, while Houlahan’s district covers Chester County.
In a joint statement, Johnson and Jeffries said they were confident in the chosen members to “find the facts, ensure accountability and help make certain such failures never happen again.”
Houlahan said she is hoping the task force will make time to visit the site of the shooting in Butler County.
“I think there’s nothing that passes for being there other than being there, you know, and understanding literally the landscape and the layout and trying to be able to visualize things,” Houlahan said in an interview Monday.
An Air Force veteran and engineer, Houlahan said she’d look to take a data-driven approach to investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting at Trump’s Butler County rally. Trump sustained a minor injury after being shot in the ear, while firefighter Corey Comperatore was killed. Two others were injured.
An important element, she said, will be gaining an understanding of the Secret Service’s budget and the resources that were available to the agency when it was preparing security for the day.
Despite an intensely polarized climate, Houlahan remained optimistic that politics could be left out of the investigation as the bipartisan group sought answers.
“I am heartened to see that the people who the speaker and the leader have chosen are people whom I have worked with in the past and believe to be kind of straight shooters and people who will roll up their sleeves and, you know, be professionals about this process,” she said.