Former President Donald Trump suggested Wednesday Iran may have been behind a pair of attempts on his life earlier this year — but the FBI has to penetrate the assassins’ phones to be sure.
“There have been two assassination attempts on my life that we know of, and they may or may not involve, but possibly do, Iran, but I don’t really know,” Trump, 78, told supporters in Mint Hill, NC.
The 45th president was briefed Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States,” his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement.
Cheung did not say what ODNI specifically revealed to Trump, but the former president has since stated that “moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out.”
In North Carolina, Trump further claimed that the “FBI has been unable to open the three potentially foreign based apps” used by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who shot and wounded Trump July 13 at a rally in Butler, Pa.
After the attack, the FBI discovered two phones belonging to Crooks — which included encrypted messaging accounts on platforms based in Belgium, New Zealand and Germany, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) told reporters last month after being tasked with serving on a congressional task force investigating the assassination attempt.
“Why does a 19-year-old kid who is a health care aide need encrypted platforms not even based in the United States, but based abroad — where most terrorist organizations know it is harder for our law enforcement to get into?” Waltz asked at the time.
Back in July, sources told CBS News that law enforcement agents were having difficulty cracking the encrypted apps on Crooks’ phones.
It’s unclear if the information about the hard encryption was presented to Trump by ODNI.
Trump also claimed the FBI has not been able to access all the phones discovered in Ryan Wesley Routh’s car after he was found with SKS rifle on Trump’s West Palm Beach, Fla. golf course.
“In the second case, the assassin had six cell phones in his car, yet the FBI has likewise been unable to penetrate their guard. Shouldn’t be tough to do,” Trump said.
“They want to know, and I want to know, and the whole country and maybe the world wants to know, who is he calling? Who is he calling?”
The FBI found that two of the six phones in Routh’s car showed him in proximity to Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach several times in the month leading up to the assassination attempt on Sep. 15.
An unnamed person alerted authorities to a box that Routh had given them in the months leading up to the assassination attempt, that contained a chilling letter, “ammunition, a metal pipe, miscellaneous building materials, tools” and four additional phones, the Department of Justice said Monday.
“They must get Apple to open these foreign apps, and they must get Apple to likewise, open the six phones from the second lunatic, who is a lunatic, and open them immediately, because we have a lot at stake,” Trump said Wednesday.
He also said he would protect any major political candidate, Democrat or Republican, if he were president.
“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case, Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens.”
Trump told his supporters that he will not stop campaigning, despite the threats.
“No threat will shake me, no enemy will intimidate me, and I have, I have never been more determined than I am today, and I will never back down in my fight to make America great again.”