Donald Trump survived a weekend assassination attempt days before he is due to accept the formal Republican presidential nomination, in an attack that will further inflame the U.S. political divide and has raised questions about his security.
This is about the fourth attempt on his life since 2016.
Trump, 78, had just begun a campaign speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles (50 km) north of Pittsburgh, on Saturday when shots rang out, hitting the former president’s right ear and streaking his face with blood.
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” Trump mouthed to supporters, pumping his fist, as Secret Service agents rushed him away. His campaign said he was doing well and appeared to have suffered no major injury besides a wound on his upper right ear.
Despite the chaos, Trump defiantly turned to the crowd, raising his fist in a powerful image of resilience.
“I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” Trump later posted on Truth Social, describing the moment he heard the whizzing sound and felt the searing pain as the bullet tore through his skin.
The FBI identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the suspect in what it called an attempted assassination. He was a registered Republican, according to state voter records and had made a $15 donation to a Democratic political action committee at the age of 17.
Who Is Thomas Matthew Crooks, The 20-Year-Old Suspected Shooter?
Crooks’ shots injured Trump, grazing his ear, and tragically claimed the life of an innocent bystander while critically wounding two others.
The gunman, who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania was identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. Crooks is a resident of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, but officials refused additional information about him. “This remains an active and ongoing investigation,” the FBI said in a statement.
Did Thomas Matthew Crooks Act Alone Or Was There A Second Shooter?
Pennsylvania voter records show that a Thomas Matthew Crooks, with the same address and birth date, is registered as a Republican.
Did Thomas Matthew Crooks, the suspected gunman in former President Donald Trump’s assassination attempt, act alone or was there a second shooter. As the FBI delves into the motive behind the attack, Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bevins told agencies that it is too early to determine if Crooks acted alone. “We have one shooter tentatively identified, but our investigation continues. We’re following numerous leads, and it will take some time before we can conclusively determine if there was only one gunman,” Bevins stated.
How Crooks Was Killed
The Secret Service counter-sniper team’s swift response resulted in a direct headshot, immediately neutralizing Crooks. The incident occurred shortly after Trump began his address, with the former president grimacing in pain and clutching his right ear as blood became visible.
Authorities, including the FBI and local law enforcement, are investigating the motive behind Crooks’ actions. Officials confirmed they are treating the shooting as an attempted assassination.
Assassination Attempts And Plots On US Presidents
Andrew Jackson
- January 30, 1835: Just outside the Capitol Building, a house painter named Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot President Andrew Jackson with two pistols, both of which misfired. Later somebody tried the two pistols and both worked fine. Lawrence was apprehended after Jackson beat him severely with his cane. Lawrence was found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to a mental institution until his death in 1861.[51]
Abraham Lincoln
- February 23, 1861: President-elect Abraham Lincoln passed through Baltimore amid threats of the Baltimore Plot, an alleged conspiracy by Confederate sympathizers in Maryland to assassinate Lincoln on route to his inauguration, being carried out. Allan Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency played a key role in protecting the president-elect by managing Lincoln’s security throughout the journey.
William Howard Taft
- In 1909, William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz planned a summit in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, a historic first meeting between a U.S. president and a Mexican president and also the first time an American president would cross the border into MexicoOn October 16, the day of the summit, Burnham and Private C.R. Moore, a Texas Ranger, discovered 52-year-old Julius Bergerson holding a concealed palm pistol standing at the El Paso Chamber of Commerce building along the procession route. Burnham and Moore captured and disarmed Bergerson within only a few feet (around one meter) of Taft and Díaz.
Herbert Hoover
- On November 19, 1928, President-elect, Hoover embarked on a ten-nation “goodwill tour” of Central and South America. While crossing the Andes Mountains from Chile, an assassination plot by Argentine anarchists was thwarted. The group was led by Severino Di Giovanni, who planned to blow up his train as it crossed the Argentinian central plain. The plotters had an itinerary but the bomber was arrested before he could place the explosives on the rails.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
- On February 15, 1933, seventeen days before Roosevelt’s first presidential inauguration, Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots at Roosevelt in Miami, Florida. Zangara’s shots missed the president-elect, but Zangara did mortally wound Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak and injured four other people. Zangara pleaded guilty to the murder of Cermak and was executed in the electric chair on March 20, 1933.
Harry S. Truman
- Mid-1947: During the Jewish insurgency in Palestine before the formation of the State of Israel, the Zionist paramilitary organization Lehi was alleged to have sent a number of letter bombs addressed to the president and high-ranking staff at the White House. At the time, the incident was not publicized, but Truman’s daughter Margaret Truman disclosed the alleged incident in her biography of Truman published in 1972; the allegation was previously disclosed in a memoir by Ira R. T. Smith, who worked in the mail room.
John F. Kennedy
- December 11, 1960: While vacationing in Palm Beach, Florida, President-elect John F. Kennedy was threatened by Richard Paul Pavlick, a 73-year-old former postal worker driven by hatred of Catholics. Pavlick intended to crash his dynamite-laden 1950 Buick into Kennedy’s vehicle, but he changed his mind after seeing Kennedy’s wife and daughter bid him goodbye. Pavlick was arrested three days later by the Secret Service after being stopped for a driving violation; police found the dynamite in his car and arrested him.
Richard Nixon
- April 13, 1972: Arthur Bremer carried a firearm to a motorcade in Ottawa, Canada, intending to shoot Nixon, but the president’s car went by too fast for Bremer to get a good shot. The next day, Bremer thought he saw Nixon’s car outside of the Centre Block, but it had disappeared by the time he could retrieve his gun from his hotel room.[78] A month later, Bremer instead shot and seriously injured the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, who was paralyzed from the waist down until his death in 1998. Three other people were unintentionally wounded. Bremer served 35 years in prison for the shooting of Governor Wallace.[79][80]
Gerald Ford
- Mid-August 1974: Muharem Kurbegovic, also known as The Alphabet Bomber, said in a message that he was going to come to Washington, D.C., and throw a nerve gas bomb at President Gerald Ford, then just ten days into his presidency. Within one day, the CIA, the U.S. Secret Service, and other law enforcement agencies, working out of the White House basement, identified Kurbegovich; he was arrested on August 20.
Jimmy Carter
- May 5, 1979: Raymond Lee Harvey was an Ohio-born unemployed American drifter. He was arrested by the Secret Service after being found carrying a starter pistol with blank rounds, ten minutes before Carter was to give a speech at the Civic Center Mall in Los Angeles on May 5, 1979. Harvey had a history of mental illness, but police had to investigate his claim that he was part of a four-man operation to assassinate the president.
George H. W. Bush
- April 13, 1993: According to Kuwaiti authorities, and an FBI investigation [94] fourteen Kuwaiti and Iraqi men believed to be working for Saddam Hussein smuggled bombs into Kuwait, planning to assassinate former President Bush by a car bomb during his visit to Kuwait University three months after he had left office in January 1993. The former president was on a visit to Kuwait in 1993 to commemorate the coalition’s victory over Iraq in the Persian Gulf War when Kuwaiti officials claimed to have foiled an alleged assassination plot and arrested the suspects.
- Bill Clinton
- January 21, 1994: Ronald Gene Barbour, a retired military officer and freelance writer, plotted to kill Clinton while the president was jogging. Barbour returned to Florida a week later without having fired the shots at the president, who was on a state visit to Russia. Barbour was sentenced to five years in prison and was released in 1998.
- October 29, 1994: Francisco Martin Duran fired at least 29 shots with a 7.62×39mm Type 56 semi-automatic rifle at the White House from a fence overlooking the North Lawn, thinking that Clinton was among the men in dark suits standing there (Clinton was inside). Three tourists, Harry Rakosky, Ken Davis and Robert Haines, tackled Duran before he could injure anyone. Found to have a suicide note in his pocket, Duran was sentenced to 40 years in prison.[100]
George W. Bush
- May 10, 2005: While President Bush was giving a speech in the Freedom Square in Tbilisi, Georgia, Vladimir Arutyunian threw a live Soviet-made RGD-5 hand grenade toward the podium. The grenade had its pin pulled, but did not explode because a red tartan handkerchief was wrapped tightly around it, preventing the safety lever from detaching. After escaping that day, Arutyunian was arrested in July 2005. During his arrest, he killed an Interior Ministry agent. He was convicted in January 2006 and given a life sentence.
Barack Obama
December 2008: A United States Marine, 20-year-old Kody Brittingham, wrote that he had taken an oath to “protect against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.” In a signed “letter of intent,” he identified President-elect Obama as a “domestic enemy” and the target of Brittingham’s planned assassination plot. A search of his barracks uncovered a journal containing white supremacist material. In June 2010, Brittingham was sentenced to 100 months in federal prison.
Joe Biden
May 23, 2023: Sai Varshith Kandula, a 19-year-old man from St. Louis, drove a rented box truck into a barrier that separated the White House grounds from the public. Shortly thereafter he was taken into custody by the United States Park Police and was found to have a Nazi flag in his truck. Kandula expressed admiration for the Third Reich and stated his intentions were to “kill the president” and “seize power”.
