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Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump is whisked away by Secret Service after shots rang out at a campaign rally at Butler Farm Show Inc. on 13 July 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania.

BUTLER, PENNSYLVANIA - 13 JULY: Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump, is whisked away by U.S. Secret Service after shots rang out at a campaign rally at Butler Farm Show Inc. on 13 July 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump slumped and injuries were visible to the side of his head. Butler County district attorney Richard Goldinger said the shooter and one audience member are dead and another was injured. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Trump Assassination Attempt Ramps Up Political Violence Fears

A shooter attacked former U.S. President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on 13 July. The incident left one spectator dead, two critically injured, and Trump wounded on his ear.

U.S. President Joe Biden ordered a review of federal security surrounding Trump, including a review of all security measures in place for this week's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Both Biden and Trump called for peace and unity following the attack. But the rhetoric around political violence has ramped up significantly online, putting security teams on high alert.

What We Know

Facts around the case continue to emerge as investigators dig into what happened, who the shooter was, and where security plans failed. So far, here are the basics that have been confirmed:

The shooting. On Saturday at 6:12 p.m. local time, Trump was a few minutes into his stump speech at a political rally at a farm show field in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a gunman fired shots toward Trump. A bullet appears to have nicked Trump’s right ear before Secret Service agents dived on top of the former president to shield him. Seconds later, counter-snipers killed the alleged shooter. Secret Service agents then huddled around Trump and escorted him off the stage and into a black SUV, which drove away.

The victims. Attendee Corey Comperatore was killed, and two others were critically injured. Comperatore was reportedly shot while shielding his family.

The assailant. The alleged attacker was Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old local man who reportedly opened fire with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle from a rooftop less than 150 meters from where Trump was speaking.

Spectators noticed the man acting strangely outside the campaign event and tipped off law enforcement, sparking a frantic search, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Rallygoers reported that Crooks was acting suspiciously and pacing near the magnetometers, and then they reported that a man was climbing a ladder. Officers were unable to find him before he made it onto the roof of a nearby building, where he allegedly shot at Trump before officers could pursue him. It is currently unclear whether or how local law enforcement teams communicated about this threat to Secret Service personnel.

Crooks was a kitchen worker at nearby nursing home. His political affiliation is unclear; he was a registered Republican, although he reportedly donated $15 to a liberal campaign group in 2021. Law enforcement officials told the AP that the weapon used to shoot at Trump was purchased legally by Crooks’ father. Crooks had bomb-making materials in the car he drove to the rally, the FBI said. The gunman’s motives remain a mystery, although investigators say they believe he acted alone.

The FBI is investigating the attack as an assassination attempt and potential domestic terrorism.

FBI officials say the alleged shooter was not known to the FBI prior to this incident, but they are combing the suspect’s background and social media activities while trying to access his phone. Early searches reveal a very minimal online presence and no evidence he used social media accounts to promote violence or discuss politics. High school classmates claim he had been bullied and isolated at school, with few social ties.

Political or Not, Shooting Ratchets Up Tension

The big gap in knowledge right now is about the shooter’s motivations. Although investigations continue, information on Crooks is minimal, and his online presence seems shallow. To behavioral threat assessment professional Steve Crimando, owner of Behavioral Science Applications, LLC, this makes the incident feel more like the profile of a notoriety-seeking mass shooter than an ideologically motivated political assassin. Reports that Crooks was bullied and isolated in school support this evaluation, he tells Security Management.

“We see these young males of the same age who start to form—out of a lack of a better identity or feeling about their prospects in life—a very nihilistic persona,” says Crimando, who is also a member of the ASIS Extremism and Political Instability Community steering committee. “They perceive themselves as powerless, as being bullied, as being physically slight without much influence. To get a gun, to do something violent like this immediately shifts you from someone who would never be known to someone who is the lead story worldwide.”

Crimando compares this shooting to the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981, where the attacker was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster by gaining instant notoriety for shooting the president.

“Was the shooter inspired at all by the rhetoric on the right and left? That’s going to be hard to know,” he says. “Or was he on the pathway to become a mass shooter anyway, and somehow decided that this would be the ultimate target to guarantee infamy and fame?”

From that perspective, having an extremely high-profile individual come to the alleged attacker’s own rural neighborhood could have proven a tempting opportunity.

In the absence of definitive proof, however, individuals are likely to find their own narratives, and the obvious assumption is that an attack on a political figure is an act of political violence, Crimando says. This viewpoint takes America's simmering political tensions and turns them up to a boiling point.

“People who were already close to the edge with violent rhetoric, violent ideology, potentially get accelerated and pushed further,” he adds. “There’s the potential for people who are already thinking of violence to feel justified in taking action, and that’s a very important concern.”

Far-right communities online launched quickly into calls for violence, retribution, and civil war after the shooting, with some individuals calling for Democrats to be rounded up and “hung in the streets,” WIRED reported.

“Unlike the messaging in the aftermath of the attacks at the Cincinnati FBI field office and on Paul Pelosi, there is a concerted effort to present this as the consequence of left-wing rhetoric around Trump and fascism,” Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told WIRED. “A singular clear message is being spread from the top down and the bottom up, from members of Congress to right-wing influencers to neo-Nazi Telegram channels: We need to fight back.”

Conspiracy theories also took off in the aftermath of the shooting, from the right-wing claims that the incident was devised by U.S. President Joe Biden to left-wing claims that the shooting was staged to boost Trump’s chances of winning the election, WIRED explained. Online accounts claimed the shooter was an “antifa supporter” named Mark Violets, sharing a photo of an Italian soccer fan. Others claimed that current campaign rhetoric inspired the shooter.

“Disinformation is the greatest threat to both democracy and national security,” says Steve Hernandez, CEO of The North Group, a global provider of security risk management solutions that is working with both Democratic and Republican National Conventions. “Things travel at such a high rate of speed now—there’s so much out there on social media right now…. Right now, there’s not a lot of factual information. It’s hard for people to hear in the current environment, but allow for investigations to be carried out.”

The attempted assassination of Trump will “invariably widen the political divide in America,” according to Mike Blyth at Sigma 7 University, a training and exercising solution firm. “The pre-mobilization phase that precedes public gatherings and politically motivated violence will likely see a wide range of rumors, conspiracy theories, and deepfake misinformation, which will exacerbate the ‘emotional pitch’ and encourage further acts of isolated or widespread violence.

“Agitators or perpetrators of violence, whether politicians, social media influencers, violence prone individuals, domestic extremist groups, subversive nation states, or international terrorist groups may seek to exploit the attack on Saturday to further destabilize the electoral process and heighten the security risks in the America,” continues Blyth, who is researching security responses to political tensions and violence.

According to Blyth’s academic survey of 67 senior security professionals several weeks before the attack, “91 percent believed physical violence will occur, 93 percent felt that violence would be premeditated, and 59 percent believed violence would include the use of firearms. Of those surveyed, 81 percent felt that violence will occur across multiple cities, with 66 percent stating that some level of business disruption will occur and 48 percent positing that business disruption will last from weeks to months.

“Of the survey pool, 39 percent felt that their companies are ill prepared to handle politically motivated violence, 30 percent felt their business resilience strategy was not sufficiently developed, and 23 percent felt that staff education was inadequate to meet the likely threat of violence,” Blyth tells Security Management. “The attack on [Trump] has validated concerns that physical violence using weapons will be used, amplifying the need for the security professional to pause and candidly review its resilience planning measures as tensions and the potential for further—more pronounced—violence increases.”

The North Group shared a statement with Security Management about the shooting and its advice on analysis and threat assessment moving forward.

“The attempted assassination of former President Trump on July 13, 2024, serves as a firm reminder of the prevalent and confirmed threats in our contemporary world,” the statement said. “It accentuates the imperative for a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of security measures pertaining to personnel, event, business, and building security.”

In the statement, The North Group analysts added that investigators will need to closely examine security breakdowns at the event, including assessing security perimeters and how interagency communication was handled.

“There’s going to be large demand to review the current policy for these smaller political events,” Hernandez says. “It’s important that people understand this is going to evolve, as will combatants and adversaries. It’s important that we evolve with our adversaries.”

It is likely that many organizations, events, and security teams will take a “tactical pause” after the shooting to ensure that they have adequately covered all their bases, says Harry Arruda, CEO of Cooke and Associates, Inc., which is currently involved in providing executive protection services during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

“Over the next couple of weeks, there’s going to be a lot of revisiting of plans,” Arruda says, noting that previously accepted or discounted risks will be reevaluated and new layers of security will be added.

Crimando agrees that this weekend’s events should spark a revision of risk management and threat response plans, especially because political tensions can fuel preexisting workplace rifts, potentially heightening insider threat or workplace violence risks.

In regards to outside threats, “if an organization is involved in anything that’s remotely controversial and could be pinned to either the left or the right… those issues could potentially make them a larger target in a simmering to boiling environment,” Crimando says, pointing to past threats and controversy around LGBTQ-related products or ad campaigns.  

In the past five years, the political affiliations—whether real or perceived—of individuals or events have made close protection more complex, Arruda tells Security Management. Risk management professionals have to understand the potential controversies that could arise from a principal being seen alongside or at the same event as a controversial figure.

“You also have to take in what’s been going on—what types of disruptions have there been? Has it been more violence or storming the stage and just disrupting?” Arruda asks. “You have to take all of that into consideration.”

Those political perceptions could have dangerous effects in an environment with such heightened tensions, Crimando says.

The possibility for follow-on violence is high, especially if individuals are pursuing retribution. This could include copycat attackers (those who use the 13 July shooting as a playbook for future violence) or contagion-fueled attacks. The latter phenomenon usually occurs in quicker succession, since the initial attack tips someone already on the pathway to violence over the edge, convincing the individual to act.

For now, Crimando and other security risk management professionals advise that security teams should be more attuned to public discourse, listening for changes in rhetoric or calls for action.

“We’re entering a different environment where it’s much hotter, much more reactive,” Crimando adds. “Anything and everything is going to be hyper-politicized… and the possibility for follow-on violence is pretty high.”

Hernandez adds that, “Security plans fail when we don’t look at all angles or variables that may or may not happen. We need to put everything on the table. We need to overcommunicate. Public-private partnerships are going to be essential with these events, now and in the future.”

Additional content and guidance on executive protection and political security is available in past Security Management content, including:


For more analysis from ASIS members about the shooting and its implications, check out this new ASIS blog: "ASIS Members Share Insights After Trump Assassination Attempt"

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