Dem Homeland Security chair: Details of Trump assassination attempt ‘very troubling’

The Democratic chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee says its initial bipartisan report on the July attempted assassination of Donald Trump will be released soon. But plenty of questions remain as to how the Secret Service failed to prevent the shooter from getting a clear shot at the former president. And the senator has even more questions following another apparent assassination attempt on Mr. Trump this past weekend.

“We need more information. Part of what we’ve found so far leads to further questions. It’s those questions that we need answers to, and those questions are going to require additional interviews, additional documents, for us to get the answers,” Michigan Sen. Gary Peters told reporters at a breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.

“Any time you have an assassination attempt on a president or any elected official, it’s a direct attack on our democracy,” he added.

Mr. Peters said the committee will also take a close look at the circumstances surrounding the latest apparent assassination attempt on Mr. Trump on Sunday at the former president’s golf course in southern Florida.

“We’ll be briefed on what happened in Florida. Clearly, what happened in Florida is very troubling. To have someone that can be waiting for allegedly 12 hours and not be spotted by Secret Service ... it certainly raises many questions,” Mr. Peters said.

Former President Trump has been blaming Democrats’ rhetoric accusing him of being a threat to democracy for inspiring violence against him, though it’s as yet unclear what the motives were for the gunmen in the two suspected assassination attempts.

Senator Peters conceded that inflammatory rhetoric could be dangerous. But he pointed the finger back at Mr. Trump, warning that the former president’s recent accusations, with no evidence, that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing neighbors’ pets and eating them had led to threats of violence in that town.

“I’d just say, Be careful in the words that you use to express your view, because words have power. We certainly saw words have power with Donald Trump talking about eating cats and dogs. The amount of violence that was threatened in Ohio, in that small little town, that they were forced to close schools and hunker down. That shows you that the words that you use and the stories you tell can be really powerful, and people need to be very careful about that,” he said.