Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas, facing growing scrutiny over his agency’s failures during the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, has tapped his former boss, a prominent Trump critic and Biden-Harris campaign supporter, to take part in an "independent security review" of the shooting.
Mayorkas picked Obama-era Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano to serve on the four-person panel, according to a statement on Sunday. He also picked Mark Filip, a former Department of Justice official who gave financier Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart deal on child sex trafficking charges in 2008.
Napolitano, who was Mayorkas’s boss at DHS during the Obama years, has been a longtime Trump critic. She sued the Trump administration over its immigration policies in 2017. In a conference call for the DNC in 2020, Napolitano blasted Trump for having "no plan for how to deal with the issues of structural racism that we have seen erupt around the country." She claimed Trump "threw gasoline on the fire" in his televised statement during the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.
Napolitano’s involvement in the Mayorkas panel could raise questions about whether it will live up to its billing to "deliver answers to the American people to the fullest extent possible" about the assassination attempt, in which Trump was shot in the ear during a campaign speech in Pennsylvania on July 13.
Mayorkas said the panel will release a report of its findings within 45 days. He also chose former George W. Bush national security official Fran Townsend and University of Maryland police superintendent David Mitchell to serve on the panel.
It comes as Mayorkas and the Secret Service, which operates under DHS, face congressional scrutiny over both the security failures in Pennsylvania and its protection of Trump in the months before the shooting.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) on Friday called on Mayorkas to provide answers about the "stunning failure" after multiple whistleblowers told his office that DHS and Secret Service considered the Trump rally a "loose" security event.
Mayorkas falsely denied allegations last week that the Secret Service rejected requests from the Trump campaign for additional manpower and resources at campaign events. Mayorkas said the claims were "baseless and irresponsible," but the Washington Post and other outlets reported days later that Secret Service officials repeatedly denied the Trump team’s security requests on numerous occasions over the years.
Mayorkas has expressed "100 percent confidence" in the Secret Service, and its embattled director, Kim Cheatle.
Mayorkas has proved one of Biden’s most controversial cabinet officials. He has overseen a historic surge of illegal aliens crossing the southern border. He pushed the false claim that Customs and Border Protection agents used whips to round up Haitian migrants, an allegation ultimately debunked by the agency’s inspector general.
Mayorkas courted controversy at DHS during Napolitano’s tenure. In 2013, the inspector general released a scathing report that found Mayorkas pulled strings to help longtime Clinton family ally Terry McAuliffe gain approval for his company’s applications for visas for a group of Chinese investors. According to the inspector general report, Mayorkas claimed Napolitano instructed him to meet with McAuliffe after McAuliffe lobbied her on the matter in 2011. Napolitano, who hailed Mayorkas as "a man of character, integrity, experience and compassion" ahead of his Senate hearings in 2021, was not accused of wrongdoing by the inspector general.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.