White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt revealed President Donald Trump contacted the FBI and Secret Service for more information earlier this year about his first assassination attempt.
During a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired off eight shots, with one bullet grazing the right ear of Trump, who was then a presidential candidate. One attendee, Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed, and two others were injured, according to authorities. A sniper also subsequently killed Crooks.
A Senate report released over the summer found “multiple, unacceptable failures” in the planning and response of Secret Service to the incident. Six agents were suspended for failures connected to the assassination attempt, several outlets reported at the time.
While Trump was briefed after the attack, Leavitt told the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” in a clip released Tuesday that Trump has inquired about the incident to the federal agencies since returning to the White House.
Host Miranda Devine asked Leavitt directly, “Is he satisfied with what he’s found out so far?”
“You know, I don’t want to speak for him on that, because it is such a personal thing,” Leavitt said, adding that Trump wanted “an updated briefing” on what had happened.
“So he’s been briefed by his own people on the matter, and whether he’s satisfied, that’s only a question he can answer. I can’t answer it for him,” she added.
Devine pointed to how there are “so many questions out there,” noting how 16 months have passed since the assassination attempt.
“Those questions are definitely deserving of answers, and I understand why the public wants those answers, and I believe the president does too,” Leavitt said, to which Devine asked, “So why don’t we have them?”
Leavitt responded: “It’s a good question, and it’s one I’d like to see the answer to, and I think all Americans would.”
The exchange comes as Devine argued in a New York Post op-ed released Monday that Americans deserve a “better explanation” from the FBI and Secret Service about the incident, writing, “There is something very wrong with the official story and that invites conspiracy theories.”
FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X on Friday than an investigation conducted by over 480 FBI employees revealed that Crooks “had limited online and in person interactions, planned and conducted the attack alone, and did not leak or share his intent to engage in the attack with anyone.”
“Employees conducted over 1,000 interviews, addressed over 2,000 public tips, analyzed data extracted from 13 seized digital devices, reviewed nearly 500,000 digital files, collected, processed, and synchronized hundreds of hours of video footage, analyzed financial activity from 10 different accounts, and examined data associated with 25 social media or online forum accounts,” Patel wrote in the post.
During the interview, Leavitt said that Trump had turned his head in “an unfamiliar direction” and the bullet “just missed” his head.
“The odds — it could only be described as a miracle,” Leavitt said. “And I think he knows that, and I know millions of Americans around the country believe that, and that God saved President Trump in that moment.”
In September, a federal jury found Ryan Routh guilty of attempting to assassinate Trump on his Florida golf course last year — the second assassination attempt against the president that year. Routh, who pleaded not guilty to five charges, is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 18 and could face life in prison.
Rachel Cohen is a trending national politics writer for NJ.com
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