Independent panel created to review assassination attempt against Trump

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has appointed a bipartisan, independent panel to conduct a review of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trumpauthorities reported on Sunday.

The commission members will have “extensive law enforcement and security experience to conduct a 45-day independent review of the planning and actions of Secret Service agents and state and local authorities before, during, and after the July 13 event, as well as current Secret Service policies and procedures,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

The first people named to the panel were former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano; Frances Townsend, a former Homeland Security adviser in the George W. Bush administration; Mark Filip, a former federal judge and deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration; and David Mitchell, former secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security for the state of Delaware.

Additional experts may be requested to join the group in the coming days, the statement said.

The commission will have 45 days to review Secret Service policies and procedures before, during and after the shooting of Trump by a gunman in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“We formed this bipartisan group to quickly identify improvements the Secret Service can make to improve its work. We must all work together to ensure that incidents like those of July 13 are not repeated,” the members of the independent commission said in a joint statement.

Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle spoke out in favor of the review.

“I look forward to the panel examining what happened and making recommendations to help ensure this never happens again,” she said in a statement released Sunday. “The U.S. Secret Service continues to take steps to review our actions internally and remains committed to working quickly and transparently with other investigations, including those by Congress, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.”

Cheatle is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Monday.

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