Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – The FBI’s investigation into the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has reignited debate over whether major tech companies should offer law enforcement a backdoor to break their own “unbreakable” encryption.
Federal law enforcement officials say the Secret Service received intelligence warnings about an Iranian plot to kill former President Trump weeks before the assassination attempt, but experts are skeptical of any ties to Iran between the would-be assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, and still don’t have access to some of Crooks’ communications 18 days after the attack.
So it remains unclear who he was speaking to and, if so, what topics were discussed.
FBI still doesn’t have full access to shooter’s online activity
Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump was hurriedly removed from the stage during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“I believe some of the applications that he was using online were encrypted in nature and therefore were being sent back in a variety of ways,” FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said during a Senate hearing on Tuesday in response to questioning from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina.
The FBI was able to access some of his emails, but some of his encrypted communications remained undecipherable on Tuesday, he said.
“If he was talking to a foreign power — and I’m not too concerned about that because I don’t think a foreign power would hire this guy, by the way — if this was a massive Iranian plot, how do we resolve this?” Graham asked.
Trump shooting: A timeline of the assassination attempt
Acting Director of the U.S. Secret Service Ronald Rowe testifies during a hearing of the Senate Joint Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the Senate Judiciary Committee investigating security failures that led to the assassination attempt on former Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)
“Senator, you know, as we’ve said, we need a solution that provides lawful access,” Abbate said.
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have sought, unsuccessfully, to provide backdoor access to encrypted data for years. Lawmakers have been reluctant to push for it, citing privacy and due process concerns, but apps that enable encrypted communications have become popular among individuals as well as terrorist groups, crime syndicates, drug traffickers and other criminals. These apps are readily available for Apple and Android phones and are often free to use.
Suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, climbed onto a roof within 150 yards of Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. Armed with an AR-15 rifle, Crooks attempted to assassinate former President Trump, narrowly missing his head but grazing his ear, killing one rally attendee and severely injuring two others. The shocking security blunder led to numerous investigations into both the event’s security lapses and the gunman’s motives. The attack came amid rising threats from Iran.
Drone footage shows councillors climbing to the roof of the AGR building where Thomas Crooks was fired on July 13. (Fox News Digital)
“The Iranian terrorist regime has targeted our people and our country for many years,” Abbate told Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) during the hearing. “I’ve spoken here before about this. We know publicly that they have targeted former President Trump. They have called for the assassination of former President Trump.”
But in regards to the July 13 attack, he said investigators found no information that Crooks had any “domestic or foreign” co-conspirators.
“But let me be very clear, there is no evidence of that. We’re not ruling anything out. We’re looking at all possibilities and we’re keeping an open mind about that possibility,” Abbate told lawmakers on Tuesday.
What if Crux had ties to a terrorist organization or violent cartel? A senior FBI official warned Senate committee members on Tuesday that the bureau needs a way to “lawfully access” a suspect’s encrypted communications.
FBI says Trump assassination attempt came from ‘careful planning’ and involved scouting rally location
An undated file photo of Thomas Matthew Crooks. Crooks is the alleged gunman behind the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Source: Fox News Digital)
Many current and former law enforcement officials argue that hard-coded cryptography helps protect the public from major threats, while opponents of digital master keys argue that they not only put the privacy of law-abiding individuals at risk, but also create vulnerabilities that criminal hackers can exploit.
For years, the government has tried unsuccessfully to gain backdoor access to the encryption of big tech companies, according to Paul Mauro, a former New York Police Department inspector and counterterrorism expert.
“Encrypted or not, it requires what we’ve been doing with the system for 250 years: getting a warrant,” Mauro told Fox News Digital. “But by creating encryption that the creators themselves cannot break, the role of the judge has disappeared. In fact, the only ‘judge’ now is the person who can break the encryption.”
But it’s also a “dangerous path,” said David Gelman, a former Philadelphia-area prosecutor turned lawyer.
“That would undermine all trust in companies like Apple and Signal,” he told Fox News Digital.
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the attempted assassination of former U.S. President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill on July 30, 2024. (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg)
Both companies tout user privacy protection as a selling point.
“There’s limited access,” Gelman said.[It’s] There are too many invasions of privacy.”
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But even if a court issues a warrant with unbreakable encryption, it’s useless if government experts can’t crack the code.
FBI officials said earlier this week that Crooks’ encryption, including encrypted email accounts based overseas, was a challenge. The FBI said there was no indication of foreign involvement in Crooks’s scheme, but the question remains open until investigators review the contents of his hidden communications.
Investigators are also continuing to examine intelligence they have received, including activity from social media accounts that the shooter may have used and that may have advocated for what Abbate called “an alternative perspective.”
On Friday, President Trump said he would return to Butler to hold a rally to memorialize the man killed by Crooks with a stray bullet.
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Fox News’ Sarah Lampe Whitten contributed to this report.
