WASHINGTON — Following a visit to Butler, Pa., last week, the bipartisan House Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump is seeking the transcripts of interviews conducted by local law enforcement on the matter. 

What You Need To Know

  • Republican Rep. Laurel Lee is one of three Florida members on the House Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump

  • Lee visited the site of the assassination attempt last week, her second visit to Butler, Pa., since the shooting

  • Republican Congressman Mike Waltz, and Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz also serve on the Task Force

Last week marked Republican Rep. Laurel Lee’s second visit to the site of the rally where President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated. She had gone to the site in late July as a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security before the official task force was created. 

“We walked the site — we actually went up on the roof where the shooter was,” Lee said in an Aug. 30 interview. “And in some ways, it actually leaves us with more questions than we started with, because it’s all the more hard to understand why a site of this size, that is small and rural, was not secured.”

Lee is one of three Florida members serving on the task force, along with Republican Rep. Mike Waltz and Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz. 

This week, leaders of the task force announced they’ve officially requested transcripts of interviews conducted by local law enforcement in Butler. 

Lee said there will be members who go back to Butler in the coming weeks, but that other interviews and investigative work will continue on Capitol Hill when House members return from the summer recess. 

“We can meet as a committee in Washington, D.C., and bring witnesses there too,” Lee said. “We’re very interested in talking to a number of Secret Service agents, and we want to understand more about how their resources were allocated.”

Last week, on the same day members of the House task force visited Butler, an independent group of Republicans held a separate forum on the matter at the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation. 

Lee said she does not view the unofficial forum as an impediment to the House’s official investigation.

“Regardless of political party, we say we’re thirteen members of Congress,” she said. “And, I think that’s what we’re seeing from those in Congress who aren’t on the task force, too, is they just really share that grave concern about what happened here. And I’m sure that in the event that they do develop any useful information, that they will pass it along to the task force.”

The task force is developing a report on the assassination attempt that is due no later than Dec. 13.