Four Republicans miss visit to the crime scene of Donald Trump's campaign elite

Four Republican members of the House task force investigating the assassination of former President Donald Trump failed to travel to the scene of the shooting in Pennsylvania on Monday.

The task force – made up of seven Republicans and six Democrats – was set up after the July 13 shooting to investigate what went wrong and propose solutions to ensure such an attack does not happen again.

Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, suffered an ear injury when a gunman opened fire during a campaign rally in Butler, killing one person and wounding two others before the Secret Service shot and killed the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks.

On Monday, all six Democrats on the task force and three Republicans were in Butler to assess the situation first-hand, NewsNation's Joe Khalil wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Representatives Clay Higgins, Mark Green, Michael Waltz and Pat Fallon were reportedly absent.

Green's social media accounts show that he visited Tennessee College of Applied Technology Dickson and Vanderbilt University on Monday.

According to a post on his X account, Higgins was campaigning in Louisiana on Monday.

Newsweek has asked all representatives of the four congressmen via email for a statement.

Khalil said in another X-post that Monday's visit was the first time the task force had visited the crime scene as a group.

“It seems like all members of the task force will be here at some point, if they aren’t already,” Khalil wrote.

Higgins visited Butler for three days in early August and later accused the FBI in a preliminary investigative report of obstructing investigative efforts.

In the report, Higgins said the FBI released Crooks' body to his family for cremation before he could examine it. He said this “could only be described by any reasonable person as an obstruction of subsequent investigative efforts.” An FBI spokesman said Higgins' claim was “inaccurate and without merit” and that Crooks' body was released “according to standard procedures” in coordination with the medical examiner and local and state law enforcement.

In Butler, lawmakers expressed dismay on Monday that the Secret Service had left Trump unprotected against several potential targets.

“I definitely noted today that there were many sight lines that were apparently unsecured that day, that were not monitored or that were not secured,” Democratic Representative Jason Crow said, according to The New York Times.

The Secret Service has acknowledged security lapses, and last month Kimberly Cheatle resigned as director amid growing calls for her resignation.

Since then, at least five Secret Service agents have been placed on leave, including the special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office responsible for security planning ahead of the July 13 rally, the Associated Press reported.