Washington CNN —
The House special committee investigating the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, will hold its first hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday to question local police and the medical examiner about the July 13 incident in which the former president was shot and one rally attender was killed.
The hearing came a day after a bipartisan Senate committee released a scathing report that cited major failures by the Secret Service that day, including a lack of decision-making and leadership.
Those failures led to serious deficiencies in security, including a denial of resources and a lack of decision-making about who was in charge of which areas of the rally, including the group of buildings the gunman climbed, the report said.
The House task force hearing will instead focus on local law enforcement and their actions that day. Witnesses will include a local police sergeant and constable, a Pennsylvania State Police trooper and the medical examiner.
The task force, which was recently expanded by the House of Representatives to include an investigation into a second assassination attempt on Trump in Florida this month, has already visited the Pennsylvania rally and met with and interviewed local and federal law enforcement officers involved in the security that day and the subsequent investigation.
While the Secret Service initially blamed local police for the Butler disaster, it has repeatedly maintained that the agency bears full responsibility for its failures that day. But questions remain about why local police failed to stop the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, from climbing to the roofs of nearby buildings with a rifle, despite warnings that Crooks was on the ground and on the rooftops minutes before the shooting began. Crooks was shot dead at the scene by a Secret Service agent shortly after the shooting began.
