President Trump calls on Apple to decrypt iPhones of would-be assassins

Former President Trump and Republican nominee for U.S. President moments after narrowly surviving an assassination attempt on Saturday, July 13, 2024. (photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

Former U.S. President and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called on Apple to aid federal investigators in accessing phones and applications belonging to two men accused of plotting assassination attempts on his life.

Stephanie Lai for Bloomberg News:
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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.

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… 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.

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MacDailyNews Take: Can’t do it, regardless of the reason. It’s all or nothing; nothing or all. There is no “one time only” exception.

There have been people that suggest that we should have a back door. But the reality is if you put a back door in, that back door’s for everybody, for good guys and bad guys. – Apple CEO Tim Cook, December 20, 2015

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