President Donald Trump announced he is expecting a report from the Secret Service next week regarding attempts on his life last year, and if it’s possible to do so without jeopardizing security, he is inclined to make it publicly available.
“I want to find the answers,” Trump said on March 6 in the Oval Office. “I want to find out. I want to see it myself.”
Barring any potential complications, he said the goal is to release the documents.
“Maybe there’s a reason that we shouldn’t, and I don’t want to get too far ahead of my skis, but I’d be very willing to,” Trump said.
The president faced unprecedented violence on the campaign trail, being the target of two assassination attempts in the span of about two months.
Shots rang out in the early evening of July 13, 2024, while Trump was speaking to a crowd of supporters at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. One bullet struck his ear, and others hit supporters in the crowd, killing firefighter Corey Comperatore and critically injuring two others.
A Secret Service sniper responded within seconds, fatally shooting 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was lying on a nearby rooftop with a rifle.
After dropping to the ground with bullets flying, Trump rose to his feet and shouted, “Fight, fight, fight!” He was immediately shielded by his security detail and taken to a nearby hospital for treatment of the wound to his upper right ear.
Trump’s popularity surged among multiple demographic groups following the first incident, and images of him with his fist raised and blood pouring down his face went viral on social media.
Initial investigations revealed that Crooks was using foreign apps, something the president said he’d like to learn more about.
Kimberly Cheatle, then director of the Secret Service, resigned amid a flurry of criticism that Trump’s safety was jeopardized due to security failures.
The second assassination attempt occurred on Sept. 15, 2024, at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
A secret service agent saw the barrel of a rifle protruding from shrubbery at the edge of the course and fired his weapon, causing the suspect to flee.
Court documents stated that in the area where Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, had been hiding, FBI agents found a loaded SKS semiautomatic rifle with a scope attached approximately 400 yards away from where Trump was playing golf. Routh was later apprehended driving north on I-95.
The would-be assassin was taken into custody, and agents allegedly found in his possession the rifle, with the serial numbers obliterated, two backpacks, a letter declaring his intent to kill Trump, and six cell phones.
Routh was charged with attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, assaulting a federal officer, and three firearms counts. His trial is set for Sept. 8 in Miami.
“Why would someone have six cell phones?” Trump said. “That’s a lot of cell phones, and some of them had strange markings on them.”
He said the lack of transparency related to the assassination attempts is leading to speculations that a coverup is protecting potential co-conspirators.
“There could be,” Trump said. “It makes other people think that; it makes me think that a little bit, too.”
Critics of the Secret Service said Crooks’s age and his seeming foreknowledge of how, when, and where to stage his attack raised questions that remain unanswered.
The president criticized former President Joe Biden’s administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the delay.
“Biden should have released that a long time ago,” Trump said. “The FBI wouldn’t report on it. They wouldn’t say why. I would say that could be suspicious.”
Congressional lawmakers initiated an investigation, creating a special task force to review the Pennsylvania incident. The task force found “significant failures in the planning, execution, and leadership of the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners.”
In a report released in December 2024, the task force recommended 37 action points to address the security lapses and suggested “overarching structural changes” to strengthen security and prevent future occurrences.
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the date of the first assassination attempt against Trump and misspelled Routh’s name in one instance. The Epoch Times regrets the errors.
