Trump rips FBI, suggests apparent assassination attempts may have been tied to Iran

Donald Trump on Wednesday accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation of not moving quickly enough to investigate the motives in two apparent assassination attempts, while suggesting that the two suspects may have ties to Iran.

Officials have not said there is any evidence to suggest that either the shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania, or the alleged attempted assassin in West Palm Beach, Florida this month were working on behalf of Iran or any other foreign actors.

Trump made the comments during an afternoon speech just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina — a day after receiving a briefing from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that his campaign said was “regarding real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him.”

“In the old days, the FBI and the DOJ used to capture people before anything happened, and in the current days, the upper echelon of the FBI is all talk,” Trump said, “while they focus on the sitting president’s political opponents.”

He said the FBI “has been unable to open the three potentially foreign-based apps” on the Butler shooter’s phone, and has also been unable to unlock multiple cell phones that were found in the West Palm Beach suspect’s car.

“They break into apps all the time. They had no problem breaking into the apps of the J6 hostages. They broke into those apps,” Trump continued. “And they could be Iran-based, they could also be something else. But we’ll never know until they are opened, and they’ve got to get them opened.”

Trump claimed that if he were the sitting president and another candidate was under threat from a foreign country, he would “inform the threatening country, in this case, Iran … ‘We are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens. We are going to blow it to smithereens.’”

He also criticized the level of protection being offered to the Iranian president as he visited New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

“We have large security forces guarding him, and yet they are threatening our former president and the leading candidate to become the next president of the United States,” Trump said. “Certainly a strange set of circumstances.”

In a statement Tuesday about the meeting with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said intelligence officials informed them that “continued and coordinated attacks have heightened in the past few months, and law enforcement officials across all agencies are working to ensure President Trump is protected and the election is free from interference.”