Assassinations and Attempted Assassinations

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      Secret Service Pulls From Biden’s Protective Team to Guard Trump

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      In the aftermath of an assassination attempt last month, the agency has shifted members of President Biden’s protective team to the Trump campaign.The Secret Service has bolstered former President Donald J. Trump’s security in a variety of ways since the assassination attempt on him last month, several people familiar with the matter said on Thursday, including by temporarily shifting part of President Biden’s protective team to Mr. Trump.The Secret Service has also secured ballistic glass, which is designed to repel bullets, to provide enhanced protection for Mr. Trump at future outdoor campaign rallies, those people added, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential methods.The reassignment of members of a president’s team to a candidate is unusual, said a Secret Service official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential policy matters. But the increased threat of violence against Mr. Trump, combined with Mr. Biden’s recent reduced travel schedule, made the step both necessary and feasible, the official added.A White House spokesman had no immediate comment, and a Trump campaign spokeswoman declined to comment.The Secret Service has been under a cloud since July 13, when a gunman was able to fire, unimpeded, on Mr. Trump at an outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pa. The attack grazed Mr. Trump’s ear, killed a spectator and seriously wounded two others. The F.B.I. is investigating, and congressional leaders have also opened inquiries.The Secret Service has taken responsibility for the security lapses that made the shooting possible. Kimberly A. Cheatle resigned as the agency’s director and has been replaced. But even as it reels from its worst presidential security breach in more than four decades, the agency has had to continue its mission of protecting three dozen current and former officials, and their families, through what is proving to be a challenging and intense presidential campaign year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Democrats Turn to Their National Security Go-To for Trump Assassination Inquiry

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      Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, whom Democrats tapped for impeachment, investigations and tough questioning of President Biden, is their top member of a task force investigating the shooting.Representative Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat and former Army Ranger, had just ordered his second martini at a bar in Bucharest, Romania, when Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, called him with an urgent question: How quickly could he get to Ukraine?It was April 2022, weeks after Russia had invaded Ukraine and touched off an international crisis, and two Republican lawmakers had rushed to be the first to travel to the besieged country. Now Ms. Pelosi wanted to quickly arrange her own visit — and she wanted Mr. Crow, whose national security background distinguished him in his party, to come with her.A late-night phone call from Ms. Pelosi to Mr. Crow would have been improbable when he first came to Congress in 2019. Hailing from a competitive district in Colorado, he had run as a centrist and avowed detractor of the liberal Ms. Pelosi, and after he knocked off a Republican incumbent he pledged that he would not vote for her for speaker.But since then, his credentials — including three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and a Bronze Star, as well as a law degree and a background in private-sector investigations — have made Mr. Crow a go-to lawmaker for Democratic leaders on difficult national security issues.Ms. Pelosi tapped him in 2019 to manage the first impeachment of President Donald J. Trump. He was part of the whip operation to rally support for legislation to send tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine. He was selected as the top Democrat on a subcommittee investigating the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.And last month, he was named the senior Democrat on a bipartisan task force to investigate the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel Prepares for Expected Attacks by Iran and Hezbollah

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      Israel advised people to stock up on food and water in fortified safe rooms, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told soldiers that Israel is “prepared for defense, as well as offense.”Israel is girding for widely anticipated retaliatory attacks by Iran and Hezbollah, telling its people this week to stock up on food and water in fortified safe rooms, while hospitals prepare to move patients to underground wards and search-and-rescue teams position themselves in major cities.The Israeli government’s security cabinet convened on Thursday night as speculation continued over how the country’s enemies might respond to the killing of a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon, and of Hamas’s top official while he was visiting Iran. Diplomats across the Middle East and elsewhere have tried to tamp down the tensions amid fears that the Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip could broaden into a much bigger conflict across the region.Intelligence has been sparse and changes frequently. But two Israeli officials and a senior Western intelligence official said that based on the latest information, Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group closely allied with Iran, will likely strike first in a separate attack before Iran conducts its own retaliation. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, and did not provide further details about the potential attacks.The latest crisis follows the assassinations last week of Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah military commander, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader. Israel has said it killed Mr. Shukr in retaliation for a rocket attack from Lebanon that killed 12 children and teenagers, while refusing to comment on the blast that killed Mr. Haniyeh in Tehran, which has been widely attributed to Israel.Iran has vowed revenge for the killing of Mr. Haniyeh on its soil, calling it an egregious violation of Iranian sovereignty. Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, said in an address this week that the group’s response to the killing of Mr. Shukr would be severe.“Let the enemy, and those who stand behind them, await our inevitable response,” said Mr. Nasrallah. “We are looking for a true response, not a superficial one,” he added.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Iran’s Options for Retaliation Risk Escalating Middle East Crisis

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      The killing of Hamas’s political leader in Tehran was a humiliating security failure for the Iranian government.Most new Iranian presidents have months to settle into the decades-old cadence of gradual nuclear escalation, attacks against adversaries and, episodically, secret talks with the West to relieve sanctions.President Masoud Pezeshkian had 10 hours.That was the elapsed time between his swearing-in and the explosion inside an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse, at 2 a.m. in Tehran, that killed Ismail Haniyeh, the longtime political leader of Hamas. Mr. Haniyeh had not only attended the swearing-in, but had also been embraced by the new president and met that day with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, making the assassination a particularly brazen act.Now Mr. Pezeshkian — along with Ayatollah Khamenei and top military generals — will be immersed in critical choices that may determine whether war breaks out between two of the Mideast’s most potent militaries. He spent his first day in office in national security meetings. The final decision on how to retaliate rests with Mr. Khamenei and on Wednesday he where ordered Iranian forces to strike Israel directly for what appeared to be its role in killing Mr. Haniyeh.But how that retaliation unfolds makes a difference. If Iran launches direct missile attacks, as it attempted for the first time in 45 years in April, the cycle of strike and counterstrike could easily escalate. If Hezbollah, its closest ally in the region, steps up attacks on Israel’s north or the Houthis expand their attacks in the Red Sea, the war could expand to Lebanon, or involve the need for American naval forces to keep the sea lanes open.Mourners for Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s longtime political leader, in Tehran on Wednesday.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesBehind all of those options is perhaps the riskiest choice of all: whether Iran decides to take the final step toward building an actual nuclear weapon. For decades it has walked right up to the line, producing nuclear fuel and in recent years enriching it to near bomb-grade levels. But American intelligence assessments say the country has always stopped short of an actual weapon, a decision Iranian leaders have publicly been reconsidering in recent months.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Agrees to Be Interviewed by F.B.I. in Its Investigation Into Gunman

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      The F.B.I. also provided the most comprehensive portrait to date of the shooter, revealing that he carefully concealed more than two dozen online purchases of weapons and explosives using aliases.Former President Donald J. Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the F.B.I. as part of its investigation into the motives of the 20-year-old man who tried to assassinate him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, bureau officials said on Monday.“We want to get his perspective on what he observed, like any other witness,” Kevin Rojek, the head of the bureau’s Pittsburgh field office, said on a call with reporters. “It is a standard victim interview, like we would do.”Mr. Trump’s supporters had sharply criticized Christopher A. Wray, the bureau’s director, for telling a House committee last week that investigators had not definitively determined the cause of the minor injury to the former president’s ear. By week’s end, the F.B.I. offered its most definitive explanation yet, saying it was a bullet or a fragment of one, a statement it reiterated on Monday.The F.B.I. also provided the most comprehensive portrait to date of the gunman, Thomas Crooks, revealing that he carefully concealed more than two dozen online purchases of weapons and explosives using aliases, and that he gathered information on other assassination attempts, including the shooting of Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia, in May.Mr. Rojek also provided information about a critical — and lost — opportunity to stop Mr. Crooks. He said that a local law enforcement officer who was boosted onto the warehouse roof where Mr. Crooks had positioned himself just before the shooting “dropped down” to the ground after the shooter aimed at the officer.About 25 to 30 seconds later, Mr. Crooks fired eight rounds — hitting Mr. Trump’s ear, killing a bystander and injuring two other people.F.B.I. officials said they were taking the unusual step of providing investigative details, even though their efforts were continuing, to combat conspiracy theories and misinformation.They also said that their investigation was not geared toward identifying or analyzing security failures by the Secret Service and local enforcement that allowed Mr. Crooks to get within a few hundred yards of Mr. Trump to discharge a deadly volley with a clear line of sight.The investigation, they said, has been entirely focused on determining whether he was motivated by political animus — they have found no evidence to suggest that so far — and to find out if he was part of a larger conspiracy. They have not ruled that possibility out, but thus far, the bureau has found that Mr. Crooks had few contacts outside of his immediate family, and did not even seem to interact much with co-workers or fellow participants on gaming platforms.“We do still believe that he was a loner,” Mr. Rojek said. More

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      Bullet or Fragment of One Struck Trump’s Ear, F.B.I. Says

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      The explanation was the most definitive to date after the bureau’s director had earlier suggested the former president might have been hit by shrapnel, igniting a political storm.The F.B.I. said on Friday that Donald J. Trump had been struck by a “bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces,” providing the most definitive explanation to date about what injured the former president’s ear during an assassination attempt this month.Ambiguity about Mr. Trump’s injury turned into a political firestorm as the former president and his political allies attacked the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, for comments he made on Wednesday before Congress.“With respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Mr. Wray told the House Judiciary Committee.Mr. Wray’s comments incensed Mr. Trump because they seemed to cast doubt on the former president’s version of what happened at a July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pa., when a gunman opened fire, killing one and injuring two others. The shooter, Thomas Crooks, 20, was killed by a Secret Service sniper.Mr. Trump has maintained that he narrowly escaped death or serious injury after a bullet bloodied his ear, and that divine intervention spared his life. Mr. Wray’s suggestion that it might have been shrapnel angered him.After Speaker Mike Johnson questioned Mr. Wray’s comments on Thursday, the F.B.I. said in a statement that it was examining bullet fragments, and law enforcement officials said the bureau was trying to determine whether it was a bullet or a piece of one.Mr. Trump, who has been deeply critical of the F.B.I. for years, responded with a blistering post on social media: “No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard. There was no glass, there was no shrapnel.”He added, “No wonder the once storied FBI has lost the confidence of America!”Mr. Wray has never disputed that the former president was in grave danger. He has repeatedly said the assassination attempt was an attack on democracy, and his agency said on Friday that there was no doubt that Mr. Crooks tried to kill the former president.“What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle,” the F.B.I. said in a statement.Mr. Crooks fired eight bullets from an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle. Gun experts say the ammunition that Mr. Crooks used can easily fragment after hitting a solid object, sending deadly debris through the air. In certain circumstances, shrapnel and bullet fragments can be lethal.On Friday, The New York Times published an analysis that strongly suggested Mr. Trump was grazed by the first of the eight bullets fired by the gunman. More

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      Assessing Cause of Trump Wound, F.B.I. Examines Bullet Fragments From Rally

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      The bureau is assessing what caused the former president’s wound during an assassination attempt. The question has turned political.The F.B.I. is examining numerous metal fragments found near the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., to determine whether an assassin’s bullet — or potential debris — grazed former President Donald J. Trump’s head, bloodying his ear, according to the F.B.I. and a federal law enforcement official.The bureau has asked to interview Mr. Trump as part of its broader investigation, hoping to provide insights into the shooting and possibly a more complete record of his injury, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the continuing inquiry.Unanswered questions about the object that struck the Republican nominee for president have lingered since the shooting on July 13, with Mr. Trump claiming that he was struck by a bullet — and casting his survival as an act of divine intervention.F.B.I. officials have been more circumspect, citing the need to analyze the evidence before determining what struck Mr. Trump — a bullet, metal shard or something else.The bureau’s shooting reconstruction team “continues to examine evidence from the scene, including bullet fragments, and the investigation remains ongoing,” the F.B.I. said in a statement on Thursday. In addition to injuring Mr. Trump, the gunman, Thomas Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pa., shot three rally attendees, one fatally.Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, did not answer whether the bureau had asked to review the former president’s medical records after the incident, but Mr. Trump has not released them publicly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      John Hinckley Jr. and the Madness of American Political Violence

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      In September 2016, three and a half decades after he shot President Ronald Reagan in a deranged bid to impress the actress Jodie Foster — a crime for which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity — John W. Hinckley Jr. was released from St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. From there, he moved to Williamsburg, Va., where he lived for some years with his elderly mother, Jo Ann, in a large house overlooking the 13th hole of a golf course. The federal court that granted his release did so on certain conditions. One of these was that he must not speak to the media. Another was that Hinckley, who was a songwriter for some years before the failed assassination attempt, and who continued to play music as part of his psychiatric treatment, must not release for public consumption, even anonymously, any of his work, without the specific approval of the treatment team entrusted with his care.After his arrest, Hinckley was diagnosed with, among other conditions, atypical psychosis and severe narcissistic personality disorder; his extravagantly strange and violent actions had been bound up in a toxic fascination with celebrity and an egomaniacal glee at the fame those actions brought him. Although Hinckley’s treatment was successful, and the judge was satisfied that he presented a very low risk of reoffending, the restrictions were intended to ensure that he neither courted nor was courted by the media and that his mental stability would not be threatened in the immediate aftermath of his release by widespread attention.In 2022, not long after his mother died, the last of those restrictions were lifted. More than four decades after shooting Ronald Reagan — along with a Secret Service agent named Timothy McCarthy, a police officer named Thomas Delahanty and Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who was left permanently disabled — he was, at 67 years of age, truly free. Hinckley had by then opened a Twitter account and amassed thousands of followers. On June 15, 2022, the day the restrictions were lifted, he posted the following: “After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!” His following grew, and he quickly began to use his platform to release music and promote upcoming gigs. He announced a total of a dozen performances. Unsurprisingly, these shows got a lot of attention and began to sell out. But every single one of them was canceled before he could play, as a result of backlash, including anonymous threatening emails, received by the venues.This made Hinckley a figure of prurient interest on social media. When he posted about his excitement for an upcoming show, for instance, along with a selfie in which he stared directly at the camera with a glazed and entirely affectless expression, the replies were a chorus of ironic quips and jokes. Someone replied with a GIF of Travis Bickle clapping — a reference to Hinckley’s infamous inspiration for his crime, an obsession with “Taxi Driver” and with Jodie Foster, who played the teenage prostitute Iris in the film. “Haven’t heard his new stuff but I like his earlier work,” read another. (Jokes about Hinckley’s “early work” follow him everywhere online.) For a majority of people who encountered his internet presence, Hinckley was an absurd and quintessentially American aberration: a guy who shot, and very nearly killed, the president and was somehow still alive to sing his songs about peace and love and redemption.Hinckley at his office in Williamsburg, Va., in June.Stefan Ruiz for The New York TimesThen, 43 years after that near assassination, in Butler, Pa., a 20-year-old loner named Thomas Matthew Crooks took several shots at Donald Trump with a semiautomatic rifle, wounding the former president’s right ear and plunging an already dark and chaotic world even deeper into darkness and chaos. Hinckley now became the focus of a different kind of interest. After the shooting, he posted the following message on the platform now known as X: “Violence is not the way to go. Give peace a chance.” He was quoting his old hero John Lennon, who was himself murdered by a strange and sick and lonely young man with a gun. The tweet provoked a by-now predictable response. There were GIFs of Jodie Foster looking haunted (“Hope she sees this bro”) and of Travis Bickle talking to himself in the mirror. There was an article in The Guardian headlined “Man Who Tried to Assassinate Reagan Says ‘Violence Is Not the Way to Go.’ ” Mostly, people seemed to be able to respond to the message only as evidence of the further derangement of things.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More