GOP lawmaker says he recreated Trump shooting to show security failure

A Texas Republican said he recreated the shooting at former President Trump’s rally with an AR-15 over the weekend to show the security failure of the incident.

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) said during Monday’s House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing that he used his AR-15 on Saturday to “recreate the events” of the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13.

A shooter opened fire on Trump during a rally, grazing the former president in the ear with a bullet. The Secret Service has come under intense criticism over the incident, with bipartisan calls for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to step down.

“I have never had any long-gun training in my life. I own an AR-15, and last time I shot it — I shot it one time my whole life — was six years ago. That is until Saturday, where we recreated the events, in Savoy, Texas, we recreated what happened in Butler,” Fallon said.

“I was lying prone on a sloped roof at 130 yards at 6:30 at night. And I knew that he had a scope. I didn’t know what kind red dot or magnified, so I shot eight rounds from both. You know what the result was? Fifteen out of 16 kill shots!” he said as he raised his voice. “And the one I missed would have hit the president’s ear. That’s a 94 percent success rate, and that shooter was a better shot than me.”

The shooting left one rally attendee dead and two injured. After the gunman fired toward Trump, a countersniper shot and killed him.

Questions have swirled over how the gunman got close enough to take a shot at Trump, and many lawmakers during Monday’s heated committee hearing expressed frustration with Cheatle.

Fallon criticized Cheatle for not visiting the site of the attempted assassination.

“Nine days and you have not visited the site,” Fallon said. “You should have been there that night.”

He then called for Cheatle to be “fired immediately.”

During his turn later on in the hearing, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) criticized Fallon’s anecdote of recreating the shooting.

“I want to just point out one thing that my colleague from Texas was talking about when he said he recreated the shooting twice with an AR-15 and he had a 94 percent success rate, 15 out of 16 shots. I don’t know why that doesn’t convince him that we should get rid of AR-15s.”