Andrew Jackson 's attempted assassination • 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.
Abraham Lincoln • February 23, 1861:
President-elect Lincoln passed through
Baltimore, Maryland amid threats of the
Baltimore Plot, an alleged conspiracy by
Confederate sympathizers in
Maryland to assassinate Lincoln en route to his
inauguration.
Allan Pinkerton's
National Detective Agency played a key role in protecting the president-elect by managing Lincoln's security throughout the journey. Although scholars debate whether the threat was real, Lincoln and his advisers took action to ensure his safe passage through Baltimore. • December 1863: Confederate agent Godfrey Joseph Hyams claimed in 1865 that in December 1863 he had been recruited by
Luke P. Blackburn into a plot to infect Northern cities with
yellow fever by distributing clothes from patients infected with the disease throughout the target cities. Hyams also alleged that Blackburn had told him to deliver a batch of contaminated clothes to the White House to infect President Lincoln, but he had disobeyed this order. Unknown at the time was the fact that yellow fever is spread by
mosquito bites and not by touch, so any such plot was doomed to failure. Blackburn stood trial after Hyams went public with his allegations but was acquitted. • August 1864: A lone rifle shot fired by an unknown sniper missed Lincoln's head by inches (passing through his hat) as he rode in the late evening, unguarded, north from the White House to the
Soldiers' Home (his regular retreat where he would work and sleep before returning to the White House the following morning). Near 11:00 PM, Private John W. Nichols of the
Pennsylvania 150th Volunteers, the sentry on duty at the gated entrance to the Soldiers' Home grounds, heard the rifle shot and moments later saw the president riding toward him "bareheaded". Lincoln described the matter to
Ward Lamon, his old friend and loyal bodyguard. • April 1865: On April 1, Confederate agent
Thomas F. Harney was dispatched from
Richmond to Washington, D.C., on a mission to decapitate the United States government by killing President Lincoln and his cabinet. The plan was that Harney would blow up the White House after gaining access via a secret underground entrance. Union troops were tipped off about the plot by Confederate soldier William H. Snyder and Harney was arrested en route to Washington on April 10. • April 11, 1865:
John Wilkes Booth, who would make a successful attempt on Lincoln's life three days later, attended Lincoln's final public address in Washington, D.C., with his future co-conspirators
David Herold and
Lewis Powell. During the speech, Booth became enraged when Lincoln expressed his support for granting voting rights to former slaves and ordered Powell to shoot Lincoln. Powell ultimately decided against it for fear of the crowd, but Booth vowed to "put him through" and formulated a plan to kill Lincoln which came to fruition on April 14.
William Howard Taft and
Porfirio Díaz, historic first presidential summit,
Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, October 16, 1909 • 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 Mexico. Díaz requested the meeting to show U.S. support for his planned eighth run as president, and Taft agreed to support Díaz in order to protect the several billion dollars of American capital then invested in Mexico. Both sides agreed that the disputed
Chamizal strip connecting El Paso to Ciudad Juárez would be considered neutral territory with no flags present during the summit, but the meeting focused attention on this territory and resulted in assassination threats and other serious security concerns. The
Texas Rangers, 4,000
U.S. and
Mexican troops, U.S. Secret Service agents,
FBI agents, and
U.S. Marshals were all called in to provide security. An additional 250-member private security detail led by
Frederick Russell Burnham, the celebrated scout, was hired by
John Hays Hammond. Hammond was a close friend of Taft from
Yale University and a former candidate for U.S. vice president in the
1908 presidential election who, along with his business partner Burnham, held considerable mining interests in Mexico. On 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. • 1910: President Taft visited his aunt,
Delia Torrey, in
Millbury, Massachusetts. Torrey later reported receiving a stranger who allegedly overheard an assassination plot in
Boston, Massachusetts. Before leaving nearby
Worcester, Massachusetts by train, he threatened Torrey, who claimed the stranger "did not want anything to get into the papers, and if it did he would come back and kill me." Torrey reported the plot to the local police, who shared the allegation with the Worcester Police and the Secret Service. The man was never identified.
Herbert Hoover • November 19, 1928: President-elect
Hoover embarked on a ten-nation "goodwill tour" of
Central and South America. While he was 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. Hoover professed unconcern, tearing off the front page of a newspaper that revealed the plot and explaining, "It's just as well that
Lou shouldn't see it," referring to his wife. His complimentary remarks on Argentina were well received in both the host country and in the press.
Franklin D. Roosevelt • 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. It has never been conclusively determined who was Zangara's target, but most assumed at first that he had been shooting at the president-elect. Another theory is that the attempt may have been ordered by the imprisoned
Al Capone, and that Cermak, who had led a crackdown on the
Chicago Outfit and Chicago organized crime more generally, was the true target. • 1943: Soviet
NKVD claimed to have discovered a
Nazi German Waffen-SS plan to assassinate Roosevelt,
Winston Churchill, and
Joseph Stalin at the
Tehran Conference.
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. According to Truman, the Secret Service was alerted by
British intelligence after similar letters had been sent to high-ranking British officials and Lehi claimed credit; the mail room of the White House intercepted the letters intended for President Truman and the Secret Service defused them. • November 1, 1950: Two
Puerto Rican pro-independence activists,
Oscar Collazo and
Griselio Torresola, attempted to kill President
Truman at the
Blair House, where Truman was living while the White House was undergoing major renovations. In the attack, Torresola injured
White House policeman Joseph Downs and mortally wounded White House policeman
Leslie Coffelt. Coffelt returned fire, killing Torresola with a shot to the head. Collazo wounded an officer before being shot in the stomach. Collazo survived with serious injuries; Coffelt died of his wounds 4 hours later in a hospital. Truman was not harmed, but he was placed at a huge risk. Collazo was convicted in a federal trial and received the death sentence. Truman commuted Collazo's death sentence to life in prison. In 1979, President
Jimmy Carter further commuted Collazo's sentence to time served.
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 from
Belmont, New Hampshire, 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 four days later by the Secret Service after being stopped for a driving violation; police found the dynamite in his car and arrested him. On January 27, 1961, Pavlick was committed to the
United States Public Health Service mental hospital in
Springfield, Missouri, then was indicted for threatening Kennedy's life seven weeks later. Charges against Pavlick were dropped on December 2, 1963, ten days after
Kennedy's assassination in Dallas. Judge
Emett Clay Choate ruled that Pavlick was unable to distinguish between right and wrong in his actions, but kept him in the mental hospital. The federal government also dropped charges in August 1964, and Pavlick was eventually released from the
New Hampshire State Hospital on December 13, 1966. He died in 1975, aged 88. • November 1963: 30-year-old Chicago native Thomas Arthur Vallee was suspected of attempting to assassinate President John F. Kennedy in Chicago in the weeks before Kennedy was actually assassinated in Dallas. Vallee was a right-wing extremist and member of the
John Birch Society. His landlady found newspaper clippings of JFK covering his wall two days before Kennedy was set to visit Chicago. She called the Chicago PD who in turn called the Secret Service. The next day Vallee told his landlady that he was to leave the following day, the day Kennedy was to be in Chicago. An all-points bulletin was sent out which led to him being pulled over for a minor traffic violation. A knife, an M1 rifle and over a thousand rounds of ammunition were discovered in his car.
Richard Nixon • April 13, 1972: 21-year-old
Arthur Bremer of
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 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. 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 wounded. Bremer served 35 years in prison. • February 22, 1974: 44-year-old
Samuel Byck of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania planned to kill
Nixon by crashing a commercial airliner into the
White House. He
hijacked a
DC-9 at
Baltimore-Washington International Airport after killing a
Maryland Aviation Administration police officer, and was told that it could not take off with the
wheel blocks still in place. After he shot both pilots (one later died), an officer named Charles 'Butch' Troyer shot Byck through the plane's door window. He survived long enough to kill himself by shooting.
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. The group had identified his Yugoslav origins, using a CIA voice analysis of his tapes, with court records of the cases handled by his first targets—the judge and the police commissioners—triangulating his identity. Kurbegovic was arrested in 1974 and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1980. • September 5, 1975: On the northern grounds of the
California State Capitol in Sacramento,
Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of
Charles Manson, drew a
Colt M1911 .45-caliber pistol on
Ford when he reached to shake her hand in a crowd. She had four cartridges in the pistol's
magazine but none in the chamber, and as a result, the gun did not fire. She was quickly restrained by Secret Service agent
Larry Buendorf. Fromme was sentenced to life in prison, but was released from custody on August 14, 2009 (two years and eight months after Ford's natural death in 2006). • September 22, 1975: In
San Francisco, California, only 17 days after Fromme's attempt,
Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at Ford from away. A bystander,
Oliver Sipple, grabbed Moore's arm and the shot missed Ford, striking a building wall and slightly injuring taxi driver John Ludwig. Moore was tried and convicted in federal court, and sentenced to prison for life. She was paroled from a federal prison on December 31, 2007, after serving more than 30 years—one year and five days after Ford's natural death. Moore died in 2025, aged 95.
George H. W. Bush • April 13, 1993: According to Kuwaiti authorities, and an FBI investigation fourteen Kuwaiti and Iraqi men believed to be working for
Saddam Hussein smuggled bombs into
Kuwait, planning to assassinate former President
George H. W. 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. At the time the former president was accompanied by
his wife, two of his sons, former Secretary of State
James Baker, former Chief of Staff
John Sununu, and former Treasury Secretary
Nicholas Brady. Of the 17 people Kuwaiti authorities arrested, two suspects, Wali Abdelhadi Ghazali, and Raad Abdel-Amir al-Assadi, retracted their confessions at the trial, claiming that they were coerced. A Kuwaiti court convicted all but one of the defendants. Then-president
Bill Clinton responded by launching a
cruise missile attack on an Iraqi intelligence building in the
Mansour district of
Baghdad. The plot was used as one of the justifications for the
Iraq Resolution by Bush's son,
George, who had succeeded Clinton as president, authorizing the
2003 U.S. invasion of the country. An analysis by the CIA's
Counterterrorism Center concludes the assassination plot was likely fabricated by Kuwaiti authorities; however, at the time the FBI established that the plot had been directed by the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS), and the CIA had received information suggesting that Saddam Hussein had authorized the assassination attempt to get revenge against the U.S., to punish Kuwait for working with the U.S., and to keep other Arab states for intervening in Iraq any further. The day before the attack, on April 12, 1993, the then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and future 64th U.S. secretary of state,
Madeleine Albright, went before the U.N. Security Council to present evidence of the Iraqi plot with the hope of gaining international support.
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 SKS 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. See also:
Attempted assassination of Bill Clinton • November 1994:
Osama bin Laden recruited
Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the
1993 World Trade Center bombing, to attempt to assassinate Clinton. However, believing that security would be too effective, Yousef had abandoned the plot, and instead decided to target
Pope John Paul II as part of the failed
Bojinka plot. • November 24, 1996: During his visit to the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Manila, Clinton's motorcade was rerouted before it was to drive over a bridge. Secret Service officers had intercepted a message suggesting that an attack was imminent, and
Lewis Merletti, the director of the Secret Service, ordered the motorcade to be re-routed. An intelligence team later discovered a bomb under the bridge. Subsequent U.S. investigation "revealed that [the plot] was masterminded by a Saudi terrorist living in Afghanistan named
Osama bin Laden." • October 2018: A package containing a
pipe bomb addressed to his wife
Hillary Clinton and sent to their home in
Chappaqua, New York, was intercepted by the Secret Service. It was
one of several mailed to other Democratic leaders in the same week, including former president
Barack Obama.
Bill Clinton was at the
Chappaqua home when the package was intercepted, while Hillary was in Florida campaigning for Democrats in the
2018 midterm elections. Fingerprint DNA revealed that the package was sent by Florida resident Cesar Sayoc, who was captured two days after the package was intercepted. Prosecutors sought a life sentence for Sayoc, but the judge instead sentenced him to 20 years.
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. • May 24, 2022: Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab, an
Iraqi citizen and resident of
Columbus, Ohio, was arrested for involvement in a plot to assassinate former President Bush based on information obtained from conversations he held with several undercover FBI informants. He was also accused of committing an immigration crime and planning to illegally smuggle Iraqi nationals into the U.S.
from Mexico in order to assist with the plot. He additionally claimed to informants that he had direct connections to members of the former
ISIS, including ones to former ISIS leader
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi (before his death) and a former ISIS financial chief, the latter of whom he intended to
launder money from into the U.S. via a Columbus car dealership. In February, Shihab and an informant traveled to the Bush home in Dallas, Texas, and to the
George W. Bush Institute to conduct surveillance. Shihab entered the country illegally in September 2020 with false identification. Shihab claimed to have worked with Iraqi terrorists to kill many American servicemen in Iraq from 2003 to 2006 following the
invasion. He stated that the motivation behind the assassination plot was anger over the
Iraq War.
Barack Obama • December 2008: A United States Marine, 20-year-old Kody Ray Brittingham, stationed at
Camp Lejeune, 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 8 years and 4 months in federal prison. • April 2009: A plot to assassinate Obama at the
Alliance of Civilizations summit in
Istanbul, Turkey, was discovered after a man of Syrian origins carrying forged
Al Jazeera TV
press credentials was found. The man confessed to the Turkish security services details of his plan to kill Obama with a knife. He alleged that he had three accomplices. • May 2011: Irish Islamist militant
Khalid Kelly was arrested for threatening to assassinate Barack Obama. In an interview with the
Sunday Mirror he said that al-Qaeda was likely to kill Obama on his upcoming trip to Ireland. He reportedly said he would like to do it himself, but was too well known. He stated, "Personally I would feel happy if Obama was killed. How could I not feel happy when a big enemy of Islam is gone?" • November 2011: 21-year-old
Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez was influenced by conspiracy theories and fringe religious viewpoints to attempt to murder Obama. Having traveled from his native Idaho, he hit the White House with several rounds fired from a semi-automatic rifle. No one was injured, but a window was broken. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. • 2011 to 2012: The far-right terrorist group
FEAR plotted to carry out a series of terror attacks which included assassinating Obama. The plot was foiled when four members of the group were arrested on murder charges and one, Michael Burnett, agreed to co-operate with authorities in return for a lighter sentence. • October 2012: A mentally ill man named Mitchell Kusick of
Westminster, Colorado, was arrested after confessing to his therapist that he intended to kill Obama with a shotgun at a campaign stop in
Boulder, Colorado. • April 15, 2013: A
Tupelo, Mississippi man named James Everett Dutschke
sent a letter laced with the toxin
ricin to Obama. On May 13, 2014, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. • May 2013: Ricin-laced letters were sent to Obama and New York City mayor
Michael Bloomberg vowing to kill anyone who tried to take away the sender's guns. The letters in this case were sent by actress
Shannon Richardson, who tried to frame her husband Nathan for the crime. • June 2013: Two white supremacists, Glendon Scott Crawford of
Galway, New York, and Eric Feight of
Hudson, New York, were arrested for a plot to kill Muslim Americans with a homemade "radiation gun", described by Crawford as "
Hiroshima on a light switch." It later emerged that Crawford had suggested using the device against President Obama as well as several other targets. • February 2015:
Three men from New York City were arrested by the FBI after telling undercover agents about their plans to kill Obama and join the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. • October 2018:
A package sent by
Brooklyn, New York native Cesar Sayoc Jr. that contained a
pipe bomb was sent to former President Obama at his home in Washington, D.C. The package was intercepted by the
Secret Service. • April 2019:
Larry Mitchell Hopkins, a member of the
United Constitutional Patriots militia, was arrested on April 20 after he allegedly confessed that his militia was training for a planned assassination of Obama and
Hillary Clinton. • June 29, 2023: 37-year-old Taylor Taranto of
Pasco, Washington, who participated in the
January 6 Capitol attack, was arrested near the home of Obama in Washington, D.C., with weapons and explosive-making materials.
Donald Trump •
June 18, 2016: Michael Steven Sanford, a 20-year-old man and
United Kingdom citizen from
Dorking,
Surrey, attempted to draw an officer's pistol during a Las Vegas rally to fire at Trump. Sanford was released after 11 months of imprisonment. • September 6, 2017: Gregory Lee Leingang, a 42-year-old man from
Bismarck, North Dakota, attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump in
Mandan, North Dakota, while Trump was visiting the state to rally public support. Leingang stole a
forklift from an oil refinery and drove toward the presidential
motorcade. After the forklift became jammed within the refinery, he fled on foot and was arrested by the pursuing police. While interviewed in detention, he admitted his intent to murder the president by flipping the
presidential limousine with the stolen forklift, to the surprise of authorities, who suspected he was merely stealing the vehicle for personal use. The man pleaded guilty to the attempted attack, stealing the forklift, related charges, and several other unrelated crimes on the same day. Consequently, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. His defense attorney noted a "serious psychiatric crisis". • November 2017: A man affiliated with
Islamic State (IS), whose name was not revealed, was arrested by the
Philippine National Police in
Rizal Park, Manila, for reportedly planning to assassinate Trump during the diplomatic
ASEAN Summit. In the week prior to the failed killing, the Secret Service already suspected a planned assault on the president because of the general presence of IS in the Philippines and because of threats by many people against the president on social media. Before the landing of Trump's airplane, the Secret Service discovered a credible terrorist threat from a man who threatened to kill the president on social media, quickly tracking down and arresting the terrorist. The government disclosed the incident to the public, after a year of silence, in a television documentary. • October 1, 2018: An envelope laced with ricin was sent to Trump before being discovered by mailing facilities. Several other letters were sent to the Pentagon, all of them labeled on the front with "Jack and the Missile Bean Stock Powder". Two days later on October 3, a 39-year-old
Logan, Utah resident and
Utah Navy veteran named William Clyde Allen III was arrested and charged with one count of mailing a threat against the president and five counts of mailing threatening communications to an officer or an employee of the United States. Allen pleaded not guilty to all charges. • September 2020: Letters containing the poison ricin and addressed to Donald Trump were intercepted by the Secret Service before delivery to the White House. Canadian woman Pascale Ferrier had sent the letters from Canada and was subsequently arrested while attempting to cross the Canadian border into the United States while possessing a firearm and ammunition. Ferrier was sentenced to 22 years in prison for the poisoned letters, which she had also sent to law enforcement officials in Texas. She described herself as a peaceful activist, claiming "The only regret I have is that it didn't work and that I couldn't stop Trump." • October 2020: It was reported that Barry Croft Jr., a
Bear, Delaware man who was arrested for his involvement in the
kidnapping plot against
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, included Trump in a list of politicians he wanted to
kill by hanging. In December 2022, Croft was sentenced to 19 years in prison. • July 12, 2024: A Pakistani man named Asif Merchant, reported to be an agent of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was arrested for a plot to kill Trump at a rally. Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the
U.S. National Security Council, said that the plot was believed to be in revenge for the
assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Merchant paid $5,000 to federal agents posing as hired assassins and told them they would receive their instructions after he had left the country. Merchant was arrested in
Houston, Texas, on July 12, just before attempting to leave the United States. On March 6, 2026, he was found guilty of murder-for-hire and terrorism-related charges related to the plot. He faces a potential life sentence. • July 19, 2024: 68-year-old Michael Martin Wiseman of
Palm Beach, Florida was arrested for threatening to kill Trump alongside his running mate,
JD Vance, on
Facebook. Wiseman also threatened the lives of their families, particularly to sexually assault their daughters. On September 19, Wiseman was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was opted into a pre-trial diversion program. •
September 15, 2024: 58-year-old
Ryan Wesley Routh, a
roofer and
Russo-Ukrainian war activist from
Greensboro, North Carolina, was spotted holding an
SKS-style rifle on
a private golf course belonging to Trump in
West Palm Beach, Florida. After 12 hours of hiding in shrubbery, Routh had his weapon pointed through the fence line of the golf course, 300–500 yards away from Trump. A
Secret Service agent noticed this and fired four rounds towards Routh, who then dropped his weapon and fled the scene. After a short police chase, he was stopped and detained without resistance. He was indicted on a total of 5 federal counts and 3 state counts, all of which he pleaded not guilty to. On September 23, 2025, he was found guilty on all federal counts. On February 4, 2026, he was sentenced to
life in prison without the possibility of
parole. Two conspirators who helped Routh obtain the rifle were also later arrested and charged. • September 2024: According to a criminal complaint filed by the Department of Justice, an Iranian official had ordered agents in the US to formulate a plan to kill Trump before the election. The agents, identified as 51-year-old Farjad Shakeri of
Iran, 49-year-old Carlisle Rivera of
Brooklyn, New York, and 36-year-old Jonathon Loadholt of
Staten Island, New York were charged with
murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and money laundering conspiracy. Shakeri was additionally charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and sanctions against the Government of Iran. • February 11, 2025: 17-year-old Nikita Casap, a
Moldova native and a follower of the
Order of Nine Angles, shot and killed his mother, 35-year-old Tatiana Casap, and his stepfather, 51-year-old Donald Mayer in
Waukesha, Wisconsin. Casap was accused of living with their corpses for two weeks. He was arrested on February 28 after running a stop sign while driving his stepfather's car in
WaKeeney, Kansas, 800 miles away from his Wisconsin home. The car contained his stepfather's
Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, the victims' driver's licenses and spent shell casings. Casap had planned on fleeing the country and living in exile in
Ukraine. He was also accused of plotting to assassinate President Trump in order to "instigate a race war and sow chaos", and allegedly killed his parents in order to acquire their money to fund the plot. On January 8, 2026, Casap pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree intentional homicide. On March 5, 2026, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. • April 11, 2025: 32-year-old Shawn Monper was arrested by the
FBI for posting multiple threats to assassinate Donald Trump on
social media. Since Trump took office in 2025, Monper had bought several guns and ammunition, preparing to commit a
mass shooting. Monper was living in
Butler, Pennsylvania at the time, the city where
Trump's Pennsylvania assassination attempt took place in 2024. On May 2, Monper was charged with 4 counts of
threatening to murder a U.S official to impede their official duties. • May 1, 2025: 35-year-old Richard James Spring of
Grand Rapids, Michigan was arrested after he threatened on social media a few months earlier to
rape someone in front of Trump before shooting him in the head. On June 12, Spring pleaded guilty to one count of threatening to kill and injure the president, and on October 20, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison and to pay a $2,000 fine. Additionally, he was required to undergo mental health and anger management counseling, as well as substance abuse programming while in prison. • June 11, 2025: 67-year-old James Donald Vance Jr. of
Grand Rapids, Michigan was arrested for threatening to kill Donald Trump, JD Vance,
Elon Musk, and
Donald Trump Jr. through the social media platform
Bluesky. In one post, he claimed he did not care whether he was shot by the Secret Service or spend the rest of his life in prison for doing so. Four months later on November 17, he was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. • August 2025: Nathalie Rose Jones, a 50-year-old mentally ill woman from
Lafayette, Indiana, posted on social media that she intended to kidnap and disembowel Trump with
Liz Cheney there to witness it, while referencing the 1981 science fiction novel
The Affirmation. She was arrested and charged with making violent threats against Trump. Jones claimed she was motivated to kill Trump due to her disagreement with Trump's COVID-19 policies during his first term. • February 22, 2026: Austin Tucker Martin, a 21-year-old man from
Moore County, North Carolina, snuck past security at
Mar-a-Lago, a residence of President Trump, armed with a
12-gauge Winchester SXP Defender pump-action shotgun and gasoline. He was shot and killed by
Secret Service agents shortly after entering the property. •
April 25, 2026: 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, an academic tutor and
video game developer from
Torrance, California, allegedly ran past the security checkpoint at the
Washington Hilton Hotel during the annual
White House Correspondents' Dinner, and fired one shot hitting a Secret Service agent who was wearing a
bulletproof vest in the process. He tripped and fell to the ground before he could reach the ballroom, where he was immediately subdued, arrested, and taken into custody. Trump and those in the banquet hall were all immediately evacuated. Authorities later announced that Trump and other administration officials were targeted, based on Allen's alleged
manifesto. He was charged with attempting to assassinate Trump. • April 30, 2026: A
car wash facility located in
Apex, North Carolina, was evacuated after a witness noticed an
SUV parked in front of the facility with threats against Trump written on the driver's side window, one of which claimed the driver was on his way to Washington D.C. to kill him. The witness immediately called the police, where a bomb squad arrived to evacuate the facility. The driver, identified as 41-year-old Daniel Rodney Swain of
Summerville, South Carolina, was arrested and charged with resisting a public officer, possession of
methamphetamine, and using a fake license plate.
Joe Biden •
May 22, 2023: Sai Varshith Kandula, a 19-year-old man from
Chesterfield, Missouri (near
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". On January 16, 2025, he was sentenced to eight years in prison. • August 9, 2023:
Craig DeLeeuw Robertson, a 74-year old resident of
Provo, Utah, had threatened on social media to assassinate
Joe Biden with an
M24 sniper rifle during Biden's visit to Utah. A warrant was issued for his arrest and
FBI agents raided his residence. DeLeeuw was ultimately shot and killed during the raid. • June 27, 2024: A man from Alabama allegedly plotted to ambush and kill Biden during the
2024 presidential debate, but failed to gain access to the event after attending the wrong venue. ==Deaths rumored to have been assassinations==