NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana Leaders are calling for probes into the assassination attempt of former president Donald Trump at his rally in Pennsylvania Saturday.
Monday, U.S. Senator John Kennedy, along with judiciary Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee, demanded Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) hold a hearing to investigate the attempt on Donald Trump’s life.
“Americans want to know why?”
In a YouTube video Monday, Kennedy told his followers not to rush to judgment in the events that led up to Saturday’s shooting.
“Maybe he was a left-wing or a right-wing, or was just a broken wing,” said Kennedy of the 20-year-old shooter. “Maybe he was a nut.”
He went on to proclaim a motive had not yet been determined and to let local and federal investigations into how everything played out.
“The American people deserve the answers to that, but let’s just wait to get the facts,” he said.
Monday, WWL Louisiana asked retired FBI agent James Stewart to watch the video of Saturday’s shooting and analyze the actions of the Secret Service.
“Overall, they did as excellent of a job as they could have done in those circumstances,” said Stewart. “The response, live fire response, getting him on the ground. Fortunately, Mr. Trump was adept enough to know that he was being shot at and that he kind of protected himself.”
Stewart also addressed the criticism agents have received and the concern about how a 20-year-old was able to get a rifle atop a building so close to the former president.
“That is what the investigation is going to have to prove out,” he said. “How did he have access to it? Was the area controlled at all? If it was controlled, what were they doing? Why didn’t they intervene sooner? Those are all questions that are going to be part of the FBI’s investigation.”
Stewart believes a timeline of events will help determine any missteps.
“They will scrub backward and look to see if he had any accomplices if he has a motive, and at the same time, they are going to look at the after-action on the event itself. Not so much on the shooter but on the security protocols that were good and bad,” he said.
Earlier this year, Congressman Bennie Thompson called for a bill that, if passed, would withdraw Secret Service protection if the protectee was sentenced to prison.
In a statement, Thompson told WWL Louisiana, “My bill would not have affected the Secret Service's presence during this tragic event. It aims to clarify lines of authority when a protectee is sentenced to prison and is in the custody of another law enforcement agency. That does not apply to the former President."
Congressman Troy Carter co-authored the bill and sent the following statement:
“H.R. 8081 makes it so that if any person eligible for secret service becomes an inmate of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), then the BOP is responsible for his security, not the Secret Service.”
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