Speaking to reporters at the White House, Mayorkas said the Secret Service had adjusted its protective measures for Trump, President Biden, Vice President Harris and others following violence in western Pennsylvania over the weekend. Security briefings would also be provided to independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Trump’s recently announced running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio).
Additionally, officials will assemble a team on Saturday to conduct an independent investigation into the apparent shortcomings, Mayorkas said.
“We need to act quickly and urgently because this is a security emergency,” he told reporters, adding that work should begin within “days”.
Mayorkas said the investigation would be led by someone outside the Department of Homeland Security and “external to the government, so there can be no doubt about its independence.” Their findings will be made public, he said.
“It is very important,” he added, “that this independent investigation has the confidence of the people.”
Mayorkas said he would investigate the actions of Secret Service and other law enforcement personnel “before, during and after the shooting.” The incident left one rallygoer dead and two others wounded, officials said. Trump has said he was struck by a bullet that “pierced” his right ear.
“An incident like this cannot happen,” Mayorkas told CNN earlier in the day. “We are calling it a failure.”
Mayorkas, along with Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and other Biden administration officials, are under pressure to explain whether failures in security planning for Trump’s rally hurt the 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opens fire from an unprotected rooftop 150 yards (137 meters) away.
Cheatle has not spoken publicly since the attack, though she said in a statement Monday that the agency would fully cooperate with any independent investigation and “work with the appropriate congressional committees on any oversight actions.”
The U.S. Secret Service is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Biden appointed Cheatle as director in 2022, noting that she was part of his security team when he was vice president.
Lawmakers are launching their own investigation into the attempted assassination. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Monday that Cheatle will testify before lawmakers on July 22.
Johnson said he spoke with Mayorkas hours after the attack and pressed the DHS secretary to explain why the Secret Service did not use surveillance drones to monitor the meeting from above. “Where were the drones?” Johnson said, speaking on the Brian Kilmeade show. “You should have seen someone on a roof.”
Johnson said he and other GOP lawmakers consulted with former law enforcement officials to develop a list of questions for Mayorkas and other Homeland Security officials.
Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Monday that the panel will conduct a bipartisan investigation into the shooting. The senators plan to hold a hearing “to examine security failures” that led to the shooting, the committee announced.
The House Oversight Committee will receive a briefing on the attempted assassination on Tuesday, a source said.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Minority Leader Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) were briefed Monday morning by FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate. Those briefings have been described as preliminary.
The Secret Service agents who protected Trump and killed his attacker have been widely praised for their swift and decisive action. But it’s unclear how Crooks, armed with an AR-style rifle, gained access to a nearby rooftop.
Leon Panetta, a former CIA director and defense secretary during the Obama administration, said the Biden administration must urgently assess the failures at the Trump meeting to prevent new attacks in the coming months as the country remains deeply divided ahead of the November election.
“Somebody needs to lead this investigation as quickly as possible,” Panetta, now a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, said in a telephone interview. “We’re not at the end of a political campaign, we’re at the beginning of a political campaign. We need to learn quickly what went wrong and make sure we correct it.”
When he was White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, Panetta said he met with the Secret Service before the presidential election to make sure they had considered all possible scenarios and were prepared for eventualities.
“The mere fact that he showed up on a roof with a gun and had time to sit down and shoot tells you something went seriously wrong,” Panetta said. “I don’t know how in the world you let that happen.”
Bill Bratton, a former New York police chief and member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, said he expected the FBI-led criminal investigation to take precedence over the administrative investigation into the Secret Service’s actions. Authorities must determine definitively and urgently whether the shooter acted alone — which Bratton increasingly sees as likely — or in coordination with terrorist organizations, he said.
“What was the motivation?” he said. “That’s what they’re struggling with now.”
Bratton praised the Secret Service agents who protected Trump during the attack. But he said the agency’s preparations for the rally seemed “flawed” and “not the finest moment of the Secret Service.”
“Nobody doubts the courage and the actions after the event began to unfold, the Secret Service putting their bodies between the sniper and the president,” he said. “It’s the lead-up that’s really going to be the focus. There’s certainly a chance that people will lose their positions because of this.”
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Cheatle has Biden’s support and confidence.
Mayorkas said he did not believe anyone had been transferred or removed from Trump’s security team.
Emilio T. Gonzalez, a former Army intelligence officer and Homeland Security official, said the shooting exposed glaring deficiencies in Secret Service planning and resources. He said he believed much of Trump’s security detail had needed replacing since the shooting.
“This was terribly, terribly organized from a security perspective,” Gonzalez, who supports Trump, said in an interview.
“This man should never have been that close to President Trump. His Secret Service protection should have been airtight, and it wasn’t,” he added. “Then the question is, why wasn’t it?”
Matt Viser, Jacqueline Alemany, Abigail Hauslohner, Carol D. Leonnig, María Luisa Paúl, and Leo Sands contributed to this report.