Several of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet and other administration appointees were targeted Tuesday night and this morning with “violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them,” Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman and incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced in a press release Wednesday. According to Fox News, “nearly a dozen” Trump appointees were targeted.
“These attacks ranged from bomb threats to ‘swatting,’ Leavitt said in the statement.
“In response, law enforcement acted quickly to ensure the safety of those who were targeted. President Trump and the entire Transition team are grateful for their swift action,” she added. “With President Trump as our example, dangerous acts of intimidation and violence will not deter us.”
“The violent left has been calling in bomb threats and swatting incoming members of the Trump Administration,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X. “Enough is enough with this type of deranged crap!”
The threats of violence follow two assassination attempts on the president-elect’s life.
On July 13, 2024, Trump narrowly avoided being assassinated during a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, turning his head at just the right time so the bullets only grazed his ear. The gunman, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead by law enforcement after hitting Trump and three rallygoers, one fatally.
The 78-year-old was rushed off the stage by the Secret Service, but not before he pumped his fist in the air for the stunned crowd and yelled “fight! fight! fight!”
Trump survived a second assassination attempt on September 15 at his International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. A Secret Service agent spotted a rifle barrel with a scope sticking out of the fence and “engaged” with the person, identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, a Biden-Harris supporter and Democrat donor with an extensive criminal background. Routh fled and was later apprehended and charged with firearms violations in connection with the incident.
Later that month, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) revealed that a whistleblower in the Department of Homeland Security had told him there were five known “assassination teams” in the United States pursuing Trump.
Gaetz told Just the News Editor in Chief John Solomon during an interview on the Human Events Daily television show that the whistleblower approached him shortly before the second assassination attempt on Trump’s life in West Palm Beach Florida.
He said U.S. officials were well aware that these assassination teams were targeting the former president, yet decreased his protective detail nonetheless.