Attorney General Merrick Garland expressed deep concern earlier this month over the gunman’s close approach to assassinating former President Donald Trump.
Garland spoke to NBC News on Tuesday, describing the attack that left one Trump supporter dead at a rally in Pennsylvania as a “security failure” that “should never have happened in America.” The FBI said last week that Trump was shot in the ear, but officials are still looking for a clear motive for the attack.
“This is deeply troubling,” the attorney general told NBC. “If people decide that the way to get the outcome they want is to kill someone, our democracy will not survive.”
“So we need to figure out what happened here, why it happened, and make sure it never happens again.”
Republicans have reacted with outrage since the shooting, which led to the resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle earlier this month, with bipartisan support.
Garland said there was no doubt that Trump was the target of an assassination attempt, calling the shooting a “vicious attack on democracy itself.”
“This was a major security failure,” he added. “This kind of horrific attack on a former American president cannot continue. We must stop it.”
But he added that in a democracy, people should be able to argue loudly and disagree sometimes, and then resolve those differences through the ballot box.
“There will always be winners and losers… and the people who support them will always be angry,” Garland said. “But in a democracy, you have to accept the consequences, or democracy cannot survive.”
