Trump’s Many Brushes With Death Unrivaled In US Presidential History

Donald Trump has now survived more known assassination attempts than any other U.S. president after Saturday’s shooting in Washington.

The gunman arrested at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is at least the sixth person apprehended while trying to kill Trump since 2016, a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of media reports and court records found. The number of attempts is higher if counting plots foiled in their early stages, including those by Iran, ISIS terrorists and a Wisconsin cultist. Barack Obama is a close second with five known attempts.

Violent actors have made attempts on U.S. presidents’ lives as early as Andrew Jackson in 1835, and four have succeeded. But over the past decade, Trump has endured an unprecedented wave of targeted violence further chipping away at America’s ability to resolve political disputes peacefully.

“Attempted murder is always a serious crime, but when the intended victim is the President of the United States, as well as other high-ranking members of the U.S. government, the potential consequences are far-reaching,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) wrote to a federal court Wednesday about Cole Allen, identified as the gunman who barged into the Saturday dinner with plans for a massacre. Allen “could have destabilized the entire federal government, given the number of high-ranking government officials present,” the DOJ added.

“It was, at its core, an anti-democratic act of political violence,” the DOJ said.

An Illegal Alien, Poisonous Mail And A Forklift

English illegal immigrant Michael Sandford was arrested at a June 2016 Trump rally in Nevada for trying to grab a police officer’s handgun, court records show. Sandford admitted to training to kill Trump the day prior at a gun range.

“Sandford claimed he had been planning to attempt to kill Trump for about a year but decided to act on this occasion because he finally felt confident about trying it,” a Secret Service agent wrote in a court filing at the time. Sandford also told officers he targeted Trump for being “racist,” ITV News reported.

Sandford’s mother began speaking out in 2016 about mental health struggles she said made him reckless, NBC News reported. He was sentenced to a year in prison at 20 years old and released early in May 2017, according to the DOJ and Bureau of Prisons.

Four months later, authorities caught Gregory Leingang trying to enter a North Dakota oil refinery, according to multiple reports. Investigators found that Leingang planned to steal a forklift, drive it toward Trump’s nearby presidential motorcade and flip over his limousine to kill him. Leingang pleaded guilty to federal and state charges related to fires he started that day and stealing a truck and the forklift.

Leingang “was suffering a serious psychiatric crisis during this incident” and seemed to be faring better while getting professional help in prison, his attorney said in comments reported by The Bismarck Tribune. Leingang is expected to remain in state prison until 2038, prison records show.

Federal agents later intercepted a poison-laced letter mailed to Trump in September 2020 and traced it to French-Canadian dual citizen Pascale Ferrier in Quebec, an affidavit shows. The letter called Trump an “Ugly Tyrant Clown” who would “ruin [the] USA.” She was sentenced to nearly 22 years in federal prison for mailing the poison to Trump and eight Texas law enforcement officials, the DOJ announced in 2023.

“The only regret I have is that it didn’t work and that I couldn’t stop Trump,” Ferrier told a judge at sentencing, CNN reported. Her attorney asked the court in a memo to show mercy, saying she did not aim to “influence or affect the government” and has “missed out on the joys of being a grandparent” while incarcerated.

Utah man William Allen also sent poisoned letters to Trump and other top government officials in 2018, according to the DOJ. Prosecutors concluded he was mentally ill and dropped his charges. The crime could be considered a seventh attempt on Trump’s life if not for the motive being unclear. The defendant “said he sent the letters to send a message,” court documents alleged.

‘People Gunning For Me’

The next three confirmed Trump assassination attempts prompted congressional inquiry, a high-profile resignation and growing worries about presidential security — while one incident involving a fourth gunman remains unclear.

Trump suffered his closest call yet at a July 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when 20-year-old Thomas Crooks fired multiple shots from a rooftop before the Secret Service fatally shot him. The rifle rounds hit Trump in the right ear while he spoke to rallygoers and killed Trump supporter Corey Comperatore, a firefighter and father of two. Two more elderly victims were wounded, according to the Pennsylvania State Police.

Probes by law enforcement and Congress failed to reveal Crooks’ precise reasons for targeting Trump. Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned from her role in July 2024 after lawmakers grilled her in a House hearing about the Butler rally’s security failures. For example, no one was stationed on the roof Crooks fired from. Bystanders also noticed his suspicious movements there minutes before the shooting.

In the year following the tragedy, the Secret Service took disciplinary actions against six agents, implemented dozens of operational changes that Congress requested and made progress on the rest, the agency announced. “The reforms made over this last year are just the beginning, and the agency will … make additional changes as needed,” the announcement said.

Pro-Ukraine radical and Democrat donor Ryan Routh also tried to stop Trump from returning to office in September 2024. A Secret Service agent spotted Routh hiding in a bush at Trump’s golf course with a rifle, triggering a chase that led to his arrest on a nearby highway that day.

Routh, already a felon, convinced two people from North Carolina to arrange an illegal purchase of his rifle and tried to obtain anti-aircraft weaponry from someone he thought was Ukrainian, investigators found. “Do you think Trump will be good for Ukraine?????” Routh texted the supposed Ukrainian in August 2024. Jurors convicted Routh in September of attempted presidential assassination and other federal crimes that brought a life sentence without the chance for parole.

Leftist threats to Trump’s life continued with Cole Allen, who sprinted past security at the Washington Hilton on Saturday with multiple weapons, officials said. Law enforcement restrained him after he shot a Secret Service agent, which did not kill the agent.

White House Correspondents’ Dinner attendees — and an alleged manifesto from the shooter — called out the event’s lax security that allowed people to come and go largely unvetted. The shooting also drew further attention to left-wing rhetoric’s impact due to Allen’s alleged writings calling Trump a “traitor” and other smears popularized by mainstream liberals. A social media account linked to Allen showed that pro-Ukraine sentiment may have also driven his actions.

One shooting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida months earlier was largely overlooked. Twenty-one-year-old Austin Martin of North Carolina was fatally shot by law enforcement after walking through a gate at the facility, dropping a gas can and raising a shotgun, according to media reports and the FBI.

Text messages reported by TMZ suggested Martin was outraged about scandals involving late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, but his goal or motive was never confirmed. A family member told the media that Martin came from a pro-Trump household and seemed uninterested in politics.

The president, who was in Washington during Martin’s incident, acknowledged his extraordinary circumstances in a February White House speech a day later.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be around. I got a lot of people gunning for me, don’t I, huh?” he remarked, prompting chuckles from the audience.