Rep. Mike Kelly on Trump assassination attempts: ‘We cannot accept this as Americans’

(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., the chair of the bipartisan panel investigating the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in July and the apparent one last week in Florida, called for more resources and reforms at the Secret Service during a tense time before Election Day.

Speaking to “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos along with Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., the ranking member of the committee, Kelly cited an array of explanations for breakdowns in Secret Service protection in Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the first attempt on Trump, including lack of resources and overworked agents, and that it is crucial to remedy them.

“We can redeploy money, and we need to do that. Secret Service works under Homeland Security, but getting more people on the ground, people who are trained, people who are competent, and people who have a nose for all this,” Kelly said. “These guys are exhausted. They have been played out to the very end. Why don’t we look at where we’re spending money, redeploy it, try to get more people on board.”

“This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. This is an American issue. We have to protect those who we have up for election and those that are already serving,” Kelly added. “It’s a very dangerous time for us to be looking at this and thinking this is just the way the world is. It’s not and we cannot accept this as Americans.”

The remarks come as Congress and the Secret Service both scramble to plug any operational holes that allowed a gunman in Butler in July to get off shots at Trump. The urgency of protecting him and other top candidates this election cycle was put into stark relief again just a week ago when the Secret Service thwarted another apparent assassination attempt by a man armed with a rifle outside Trump’s golf course in Florida.

In a report on Butler released Friday, the Secret Service said it failed to secure the line of sight to the former president by not securing the roof on which the shooter had taken up a firing position. It also said law enforcement did not adequately communicate that there was a threat to Trump and cited a “lack of due diligence” in establishing a secure perimeter.

“It’s important that we hold ourselves accountable for the failures of July 13, and that we use the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another failure like this,” acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said Friday.

In a joint interview with Stephanopoulos, both Kelly and Crow agreed the solution involved both resource redistribution and personnel adjustments.

“You can redeploy funds to where it is that you need them the most. I will say this. Our Secret Service now is trying to guard more people than they’ve ever had to guard in the past,” Kelly said.

“It takes years to create a Secret Service agent. So we have to rely on Department of Defense agents, other federal agencies to cover down and provide some relief to these folks, because one of the issues that we saw in Butler, Pennsylvania, was the over-reliance on local law enforcement. These are fantastic folks. They do really well, but they are not trained and equipped to provide presidential level security,” Crow added.

Both lawmakers also called on Americans to tone down rhetoric around politics amid concerns that the tense atmosphere around November’s election is playing a role in the heightened threat environment.

“Mike is a very conservative Republican. I’m a very proud Democrat,” Crow said. “And what we’re trying to show folks is we can go through an election cycle, we can have fierce and tough debates, and we can show people that we will settle our political differences and debate, but we’re going to come together on an issue that Americans expect us to come together on,” Crow said.

“There is no place in our American society, whether you’re Republican and Democrat for anybody ever to take actions into their own hands and resort to violence,” he said.