[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]

On July 21, Department of Homeland Security boss Alejandro Mayorkas appointed a panel to investigate the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. That day Thomas Matthew Crooks got off eight shots, wounding Donald Trump, killing Corey Comperatore, and wounding James Copenhaver and David Dutch. The federal panel has now issued a report finding “deep flaws” within the U.S. Secret Service, “a troubling lack of critical thinking,” and a need for “fundamental reform” of the agency.

The report includes photos and a timeline, which could all have been put together from news reports on the July 13 event. Though abounding in detail on the Butler scene, the report comes up short in other ways.

“The July 13 assassination attempt was not the work of a trained foreign adversary prepared to conduct a multi-dimensional attack and willing to sacrifice themselves in the process,” the report explains. “Rather, a young, local Pennsylvania man who had seemingly conceived of and executed his assassination plot within days after the former president’s rally was publicly announced had managed, with striking ease, to circumvent the Secret Service’s ‘no fail’ protective mission.”

The Butler site leaders had been briefed on “intelligence related to a long-range threat against former President Trump by a foreign state actor,” a possible allusion to Iran and its proxy forces. On the other hand, the report avoids any possibility of domestic collaboration in the assassination attempt. In previous months, Democrats and their media allies portrayed Trump as a threat to democracy and compared him to Hitler. Vilification on that scale is advance justification for action.

On July 8, a scant five days before the assassination attempt, Joe Biden said it was “time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye.” For all its claimed investigative zeal, the report fails to explore the background and connections of shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks, information not forthcoming from the establishment media. That lapse can be traced to a panel whose independence may well be doubted.

Leaders included Mark Filip, deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush; Frances Townsend, former Bush Homeland Security adviser; David Mitchell, former Secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security for the state of Delaware; and Janet Napolitano, Obama’s DHS secretary. If independence was the goal, Napolitano was the worst possible choice.

On her watch, Napolitano shifted DHS focus from Islamic terrorism to Obama’s domestic opposition, and the partisan Democrat was a shrill critic of Trump from the start. As head of the University of California, Napolitano sued Trump for trimming back the DACA program, which she helped establish.

In 2020, from the DNC war room, Napolitano charged that “This is Donald Trump’s America” and “what we have seen is really a demise in public safety at its most basic level.” Trump “incited” the January 6 riot, Napolitano charged in 2021, and last April the former DHS boss said that Trump running as a law-and-order candidate, “just doesn’t hold true” and claimed that “there was a terrific spike in violent crime, really, during the end of the Trump presidency.” And so on.

For his part, Trump was quite critical of George W. Bush, so the independence of former Bush officials cannot be assumed. Neither can the independence of the unnamed staffers who performed the actual work of the panel. The Napolitano report is more notable for what it does not cover, and that is also true of “Interim Staff Report: Investigating the Stunning Security Failures on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania, released by the congressional task force on October 21.

The detailed report charges the Secret Service with inadequate planning, and concludes that “the tragic events of July 13 were preventable,” a stranglehold on the obvious. Critical information about Crooks moved slowly due to fragmented lines of communication, but the report shows no interest in his background and parties he may have been communicating with long before he nearly succeeded in killing Trump.

The FBI, which did nothing to prevent the attempt, quickly promised an investigation. On July 24, FBI director Christopher Wray told a House Judiciary Committee hearing that “there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his [Trump’s] ear.” Wray was never an FBI agent and his absurd statement created doubt that Trump had even been shot.

At this writing, the FBI website on the Butler investigation updates includes official statements and testimony of FBI officials but no lengthy report of the assassination attempt in the style of the congressional task force and federal panel. This lapse should come as no surprise.

The FBI failed to prevent “transmaid” Audrey Hale from gunning down three children and three adults at a Christian school in Nashville last year. The FBI gained control of Hale’s manifesto and opposed its release despite a judge’s order. This effectively conceals the murderer’s motive, and is hardly the only case of FBI obstruction.

The FBI still has no suspects in the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich, quite possibly the leaker of Hillary Clinton’s emails. The FBI has Rich’s computer but won’t reveal what was on it. The FBI never had any suspects in the murder of Philip Haney, author of See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad. The FBI has Haney’s electronic devices and materials, possibly the manuscript for a new book. So far no revelations and no ongoing manhunt to find the killer.

The Secret Service is in obvious disarray, an invitation to another assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the nation’s true “secret” service is the FBI, the Biden Junta’s Geheime Staatspolizei. The incoming Congress should demand that the FBI reveal what it has been concealing or defund the bureau at first opportunity.