Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called on Apple Inc. to aid federal investigators in accessing phones and applications belonging to two men accused of plotting assassination attempts on his life.
The former president said that the FBI had been unable to access “three potentially foreign-based apps” on the phone of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Pennsylvania man who shot at and grazed Trump’s ear during a rally in July.
Trump also said that alleged would-be assassin Ryan Wesley Routh, who was captured after a shootout with US Secret Service at Trump’s Florida golf club, had six cell phones that the FBI had “likewise been unable to penetrate.”
“They must get Apple to open the foreign apps, and they must get Apple to likewise open the six phones from the second lunatic,” Trump told supporters at a campaign event Wednesday in North Carolina.
Apple has for years resisted requests from law enforcement to build a backdoor into its phone operating system that would allow authorities to access data without a user’s password, saying such code could be exploited by hackers. When president, Trump criticized the company for refusing to unlock the iPhone of a Royal Saudi Air Force lieutenant accused of killing three sailors in 2021.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s call for assistance from the firm comes a day after he was briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on intelligence suggesting Iran was attempting to assassinate him.
While law enforcement officials have not suggested a link to either the incident in Pennsylvania or Florida, Trump said Wednesday that it was possible Iran was responsible for one or both of the attempts on his life.
Iran has targeted Trump administration officials after the January 2020 death of Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. Soleimani was killed in a drone strike ordered by Trump.
Trump criticized President Joe Biden for not doing more to respond to Iran’s plotting.
“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case, Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens,” Trump said.
