Representative Mike Kelly, Republican of Pennsylvania, was in the audience with family, including three of his grandchildren in Butler, Pa., when a would-be assassin opened fire on former President Donald J. Trump, coming just inches away from killing him.
They heard the gunshots, saw the blood and witnessed the panic surge through the crowd as two people were critically injured and one man — Corey Comperatore, a firefighter who died protecting his family — was killed.
Afterward, Mr. Kelly’s 9-year-old grandson, Charles, asked him a question: “Grandpa, why would somebody want to shoot President Trump?”
“I said, ‘Charles, I just can’t answer that. I don’t know,” Mr. Kelly recalled. “He says, ‘This is just crazy.’ And I’m thinking, here’s a 9-year-old boy who has witnessed this all. This is something he should not have had to witness, and it’s something he’s going to carry with him.”
Now, Mr. Kelly is tasked with answering the major questions about what happened on July 13, the day of the shooting. Speaker Mike Johnson has named him chairman of a bipartisan task force that will be the lead congressional investigation into the shooting. The new task force will take over leadership of the various House inquiries.
Many of the members of the task force are legislators with military or legal experience. Mr. Kelly’s background, by contrast, is in automotive sales and serving on the Ways and Means Committee. But Mr. Kelly, 76, brings his personal experience to the mission. It was his district where the shooting occurred, his residents and own family affected. He first proposed the task force and feels a duty to see it through.
“I’m watching the president. He’s probably 50 to 60 feet away,” Mr. Kelly said of watching the assassination attempt. “He’s going over a chart and just turns his head, and all of a sudden there’s this pop and then he grabs the side of his head, and there’s a number of thoughts that go through my head. My first inclination is, where is my wife? Where are my grandchildren? Where’s my son? I watched the president go down. I watched the Secret Service cover him. Then over my left shoulder, where the makeshift stands were, there’s a woman crying: ‘He’s hurt. He’s hurt.’ and I turned around over my left shoulder and looked up about 25 or 30 feet into the stands, and I see her, and she has blood on her.’”
Mr. Kelly said he had serious concerns when he heard that the site in Butler had been selected, particularly about security and a lack of planning, and he raised them with the Trump campaign.
“I said, ‘I think that’s a mistake,’” Mr. Kelly recalled. “I asked, ‘Who did the visit? Who visited the site?’ And the answer back to me was, ‘Congressman, we’ve already made a decision.’ I said, ‘You folks have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.’ I feel today even stronger after what happened July the 13th. I have even more confidence that the original setup was not done properly.”
Mr. Kelly is an ardent supporter of Mr. Trump, and has stood by him during two impeachments and while the former president has lied about massive fraud in the 2020 election. Mr. Kelly has referred to the first impeachment of Mr. Trump as “another date that will live in infamy.” One of the managers of that impeachment was Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, who is now the top Democrat on the task force and Mr. Kelly’s partner in the shooting investigation.
During the 2020 election, Mr. Kelly filed an unsuccessful lawsuit seeking to invalidate the ballots of Pennsylvanians who voted by mail, a method that was seen as popular among Democrats.
Mr. Kelly’s former chief of staff was also involved in an effort to bring certificates from fake electors to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn President Biden’s victory. Mr. Kelly has denied involvement in that effort.
He has pledged to run the task force in a bipartisan way, working with Mr. Crow.
“I look at it as 13 members of the House of Representatives, not seven Republicans and six Democrats,” Mr. Kelly said. “These are all serious, serious people. They’re not looking for a spotlight. They’re looking to shed some light on what happened on July 13.”
Already, Mr. Kelly has brought on experienced staff, including William A. Burck, a go-to lawyer for top Republicans, as special counsel.
On Monday, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Crow sent out joint letters to the Department of Homeland Security, Secret Service, Justice Department and F.B.I., demanding documents and interviews.
Mr. Kelly made his pitch for the creation of the task force directly to Mr. Johnson.
“I talked to Mike and said, ‘Listen, this is my hometown,’” he recalled. “‘This is where I grew up. This is where I played American Legion baseball. This is where my family was that day. I watched it in real time. I watched the aftermath of what happened. I’m an eyewitness to it.’”
He wants to dig into law enforcement failures, such as why the Secret Service allowed Mr. Trump to take the stage when its agents knew a suspicious person was somewhere on the premises, but he also wants to learn more about the gunman: Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper shortly after opening fire.
“We don’t know much about Crooks,” Mr. Kelly said. “I want to find out more about, ‘Who is this person?’”
He said he hoped a serious bipartisan report would help tamp down conspiracies he sees rising up online after the shooting.
“By not having solid facts, conspiracy theories continue to grow,” Mr. Kelly said.
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