WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trumpclaimed, after an alleged assassination attempt on him on Sunday, that Democrats’ excessive rhetoric caused him to be threatened.
Documents show that threats are part of the office he once held and is now trying to regain. Moreover, threats are much more common than is generally known.
Research from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) found that since 1986, when Ronald Reagan was in the White House, the federal government has prosecuted 1,444 cases involving threats against presidents or other individuals in the line of presidential succession.
The highest number of prosecutions in a single year was in 1987 during the Reagan years, when there were 73. TRAC data shows 72 cases were filed in 2002 during the George W. Bush administration. The Bush administration also had the highest number of cases in its eight-year term with 383, a time of heightened tensions amid the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prosecutors filed 343 cases during Bill Clinton’s presidency and 213 during former President Barack Obama’s two terms. There were 68 cases filed during Trump’s first term. Reagan had 200 in the last three years of his presidency, and 213 cases were filed during George H.W. Bush’s one term.
The number of convictions was highest during the George W. Bush and Clinton years.
TRAC is a widely used database research tool developed in the 1980s by the Newhouse School and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. It was developed using government data obtained through federal open records laws and judicial processes.
Trump falls into numerous categories as a former president and a presidential candidate. There are laws regarding threats or attacks on both.
So far, Ryan Wesley Routh58, has been charged with possession of a firearm despite a prior felony conviction and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Additional charges are possible.
Authorities continued to investigate Routh’s possible motive and movements in the days and weeks leading up to Sunday, when a Secret Service agent assigned to Trump’s security detail spotted a firearm poking out of brush at the West Palm Beach golf course where Trump was playing. The agent fired, and Routh fled in an SUV, leaving behind a digital camera, a backpack, a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope and a plastic bag of food.
The attempt on Trump is unique because he is a former president trying to regain office and has now had to make two attempts. But he is not the only former president to survive an assassination attempt while trying to regain office. Teddy Roosevelt was running as a former president in 1912 when he was shot in the chest while campaigning in Milwaukee.
“This is not unprecedented. People often forget how violent the United States has been for a long time,” said David Head, a historian at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
There are a number of notable cases that are not included in the TRAC data. Reagan was seriously injured in 1982, and then-President Gerald Ford suffered two attempts on his life in a 17-day period in 1975. George W. Bush was in Tbilsi, Georgia with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in 2005, when someone rolled a hand grenade into the room that failed to explode.
Clinton was in the White House on Oct. 29, 1994, when Francisco Martin Duran, then 26, opened fire outside, firing about 20 shots into the building. No one was injured, but Duran was convicted of attempted assassination of the president and sentenced to 40 years in prison. According to the Bureau of Prisons website, he is in a federal prison in Virginia and will not be eligible for release until 2029.
Earlier this year, a New Hampshire man accused of threatening Republican candidates was found dead while a jury was deliberating his case.