Trump Shot At: Butler Rally, Florida Golf Course, and Iranian Plots

Donald Trump has been the target of three armed attacks and multiple foiled Iranian plots between July 2024 and April 2026. A gunman grazed his ear and killed a rally attendee in Butler, Pennsylvania; a second man set up a rifle along the fence of his Florida golf course; a third opened fire inside the Washington Hilton during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Federal prosecutors have also charged an Iranian intelligence operative and an IRGC asset in separate murder-for-hire plots against him. One attacker was killed on the roof he fired from, one is serving life in prison, and one is awaiting federal trial.

The Butler Rally Shooting

The first attack came on July 13, 2024, at the Butler Farm Show grounds in Pennsylvania. Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, climbed onto the roof of the American Glass Research building near the rally site and fired eight shots from an AR-style semiautomatic rifle. One round grazed Trump’s right ear as he spoke from the stage. A Secret Service counter-sniper killed Crooks seconds later.¹

Three attendees were also hit. Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old volunteer fire chief from Sarver, Pennsylvania, was killed while shielding his family. David Dutch, 57, was shot in the stomach, and James Copenhaver, 74, was shot twice. Both survived with serious injuries.²³ Trump stood with blood running down his face, raised a fist, and shouted “Fight!” The photograph became one of the defining images of the 2024 campaign.⁴

Investigators found that Crooks had scouted the venue twice and flown a drone over the grounds for 11 minutes earlier that afternoon, live-streaming the feed to his controller. The rifle recovered at the scene was a DPMS Panther Arms A-15 believed to have been bought by his father. Two improvised explosive devices sat in his car trunk, their receiver switched off.⁵⁶ The FBI concluded that Crooks had engaged in “a sustained, detailed effort to plan an attack,” acted alone, and left behind no clear ideology or motive.⁷⁸

How Butler Was Allowed to Happen

Both chambers of Congress investigated, and both concluded the attack was preventable. A bipartisan House task force led by Representatives Mike Kelly and Jason Crow released a 180-page report in December 2024 blaming failures in “planning, execution, and leadership” by the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners.⁹ A Senate report reached the same conclusion.¹⁰

The AGR building that Crooks shot from had been left outside the security perimeter. Acting Director Ronald Rowe later told senators he “cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.” Local law enforcement had flagged Crooks as suspicious roughly 90 minutes before the shooting, and the Secret Service command center was warned about a man with a rangefinder at least 20 minutes before Trump took the stage. Trump was allowed to begin speaking anyway. Crooks climbed onto the roof using an air conditioning unit at 6:06 p.m.; a local officer spotted him with a long gun five minutes later; shots came within 30 seconds of that radio call.⁵

Investigators also found a counter-drone system that had malfunctioned for hours, operated by an agent with one hour of training; inexperienced personnel assigned to plan a high-risk outdoor event; classified threat intelligence received on July 3 that was never shared with the protective detail or local police; and poor cell service during the event. At the campaign’s request, the Secret Service had declined to use farm equipment to block sightlines near the AGR building, relying on a jumbotron and a flag instead.¹⁰

What Changed Inside the Secret Service

Director Kimberly Cheatle testified before the House Oversight Committee on July 22, 2024, in a six-hour hearing in which she declined to answer many questions about specific operational failures. Chairman James Comer and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin jointly called for her resignation.¹¹¹²¹³¹⁴¹⁵

Congress passed the Enhanced Presidential Security Act of 2024 by a 405–0 House vote and unanimous Senate consent. Signed on October 1, 2024, it requires uniform staffing standards for protecting presidents, former presidents, and major candidates.¹⁶ By July 2025, the Secret Service reported implementing 21 of 46 congressional recommendations, with 16 more in progress. Six agency personnel received suspensions of 10 to 42 days without pay. No one was fired.¹⁷

The Golf Course Attempt in Florida

Two months after Butler, on September 15, 2024, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, took up a concealed position along the fence line near the sixth green of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. He pointed an SKS rifle with a scope through the chain-link fence roughly 126 feet from where Trump was playing. A Secret Service agent patrolling one hole ahead spotted Routh’s face and the rifle barrel and opened fire. Routh fled. A civilian witness recorded his license plate, and the Martin County Sheriff’s Office arrested him on Interstate 95 later that day.¹⁸¹⁹

Routh was a former North Carolina resident living in Hawaii who had once voted for Trump before becoming a vocal supporter of Ukraine’s defense against Russia. He traveled to Kyiv in April 2022 and tried to recruit foreign fighters, though Ukraine’s International Legion turned him away and called his efforts “delusional.” His record included a 2002 felony conviction for possessing a fully automatic machine gun after a three-hour standoff with police in Greensboro.²⁰

Investigators recovered burner phones with searches for Trump’s rally locations, a camera fixed to the fence pointed at the green, and a handwritten letter addressed “Dear World” that confessed to the attempt and offered $150,000 for someone to “finish the job.” Cell data placed Routh near the golf course and Mar-a-Lago repeatedly between August 18 and September 15, 2024.¹⁸¹⁹

Routh represented himself at trial. In September 2025, a federal jury convicted him on all five counts, including attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate. After the verdict, he tried to stab himself in the neck with a pen before U.S. Marshals restrained him.²¹ On February 4, 2026, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon sentenced him to life in prison plus 84 months.¹⁹ His appointed defense attorney has signaled an appeal based on the decision to let Routh represent himself.²²

The Washington Hilton Shooting

The third attack came on April 25, 2026, at the Washington Hilton during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. President Trump and the First Lady were attending. Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, sprinted through a magnetometer at a Secret Service checkpoint carrying a shotgun. He fired at a Secret Service officer, striking the officer’s ballistic vest, and the agent returned fire. Agents tackled Allen near a staircase leading to the ballroom.²³²⁴ Trump and Vice President JD Vance were evacuated.²⁵

Allen is a Caltech-educated mechanical engineer and part-time tutor with no criminal record. He had traveled by train from California armed with a Mossberg Maverick 88 shotgun, a .38 caliber pistol, and knives.²⁵ Minutes before the attack, he sent a document to family members that authorities describe as a manifesto; his brother alerted police.²⁶ Reporting described Allen as involved in left-wing activism and said his writings called Trump a “traitor” and raised grievances about detention camp conditions.²⁷

On May 5, 2026, a federal grand jury indicted Allen on four counts: attempting to assassinate the president, assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon, transporting a firearm interstate with intent to commit a felony, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence.²³ He pleaded not guilty.²⁸ His defense has moved to disqualify U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and Attorney General Todd Blanche from the prosecution, arguing that both have presented themselves publicly as victims.²⁹ The case is pending.

The Iranian Plots

Alongside the three attacks, federal prosecutors have brought charges in multiple Iranian-linked plots tied to Iran’s stated desire to avenge the 2020 U.S. killing of IRGC General Qassem Soleimani. Asif Raza Merchant, a Pakistani national working for the IRGC, entered the United States in April 2024 and was arrested on July 12, 2024, one day before the Butler shooting, as he tried to leave the country. He had met with undercover officers, paid a $5,000 advance for an assassination, and researched rally security for his Iranian handler.³⁰ After Butler, Merchant told FBI agents he believed Iran was behind that attack because “that’s the same thing he was sent here to do.”³¹ A federal jury convicted him of murder for hire and attempting to commit an act of terrorism in March 2026. In November 2024, the Department of Justice separately charged Farhad Shakeri, an IRGC asset in Tehran, and two U.S. citizens in a plot targeting Trump and Iranian-American dissident Masih Alinejad.³² The FBI has said its finding that Crooks acted alone stands separately from these foreign plots.

Victims and Civil Claims

Comperatore, a former fire chief of the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company and an Army veteran, became a national symbol of the Butler attack. Governor Josh Shapiro ordered Pennsylvania flags lowered to half-staff.² In his March 2025 address to Congress, Trump acknowledged Comperatore’s widow Helen and their daughters, saying he “sacrificed his life to save theirs.”³³ A life-size bronze statue was installed at the Butler Farm Show grounds in August 2025.³⁴ The family also launched the Corey Comperatore Foundation to support first responders, veterans, and animal rescues.³⁵

Dutch and Copenhaver, still rehabilitating in mid-2026, filed federal lawsuits against the United States in June 2026. Their complaints allege Secret Service negligence in failing to secure the AGR rooftop, communicate with local agencies, and deploy drone technology, and both men expect to need more surgeries. Each is seeking at least $150,000 in damages.³⁶³

Effect on the 2024 Campaign

The Butler shooting reshaped the final months of the 2024 race. A Wall Street Journal poll showed enthusiasm among Trump’s supporters rising from 70 percent in early July to 85 percent later that month, and a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that about a third of respondents believed Trump had survived because of “divine providence.”³⁷ Trump described his survival as an “obligation” to continue the campaign.⁴ The surge was tempered when President Biden exited the race on July 21 and Vice President Kamala Harris entered, shifting media coverage and tightening the polls. Trump returned to the Butler Farm Show grounds on October 5, 2024, one month before Election Day, speaking from a stage enclosed in protective glass with semi-trailers blocking the sightlines that had been exploited in July.³⁸

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