Donald Trump has said he is ‘willing’ to release a ‘suspicious’ report about the two alleged assassination attempts that were made against him during his 2024 campaign trail.
On July 13 last year, the US president was struck and wounded in his right ear while attending a rally in Pennsylvania.
The suspect, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired eight rounds from a gun from a roof of a nearby building, which killed an audience member and injured two others.
The president has said he would be ‘willing’ to release the information (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Crooks was killed at the scene by law enforcement.
Two months later, Ryan Wesley Routh was reportedly found hiding in bushes near Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, with a rifle.
Police allege the 58-year-old intended to injure Trump, but no injuries were reported.
Now, from a press conference in the Oval Office on Thursday (March 6), a reporter asked the POTUS: “It’s been seven months. Why do you think we don’t know more about the guy who shot you in the ear?”
“Well, and the second one with all of the cell phones,” Trump replied in reference to the September 15 incident where Routh was reportedly found with six phones.
“He had six cellphones. That’s a lot of cellphones.”
The president continued: “They are giving me a report next week sometime, and I do believe I’ll be releasing it.”
“I want to release the report,” he reiterated while stressing his own desire to ‘find the answers’.
Moving on to discuss Crooks, Trump revealed the gunman had a mysterious device with ‘three apps, two of which were foreign’.
“What’s all that about?” he said.
Donald Trump was shot in the ear last year (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Affirming his previous statements, Trump added: “We’re going to be releasing a report on that soon.”
Another reporter asked: “Based on what you’re saying right there, the lack of information and the data points that you just gave, does that make you think that they’re some part of a… that there’s something bigger?”
Trump replied: “They could be. Well, it makes other people think that.
“It makes me think it a little bit too. I say, when you have three apps and two of them are foreign, and you had an FBI that wouldn’t report on it – they didn’t want to say why – I would say that could be suspicious.”
He then praised the Secret Service for their swift response to the apparent threats and concluded with his reiteration that the report would be made public.
“I want to find out, and I would be willing to release it,” he continued. “I mean, maybe there’s a reason that we shouldn’t – I don’t want to get too far ahead of my skills, but I would be very willing to release that.”
