How Iranian threats to Trump and his aides shaped the 2024 campaign

Washington Post

a day ago

Iran nearly succeeded in orchestrating an assassination of former secretary of state Mike Pompeo at a European hotel in 2022, and then-candidate Donald Trump and his campaign were told by intelligence officials last September that the longtime U.S. foe had recruited hit men who were active at the time on American soil, according to a forthcoming book about the 2024 presidential campaign.
Security threats to Trump and his aides dramatically changed their practices and worldview on the trail, according to an account obtained by The Washington Post from '2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,' by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf. The book is scheduled to publish next month.
Much of the changes stemmed from the two assassination attempts that Trump survived during the final months of the campaign. But threats from Iran in particular appear to have imbued the candidate and his aides with a level of fear and anxiety that informed their thinking every day and prompted major changes to Trump's schedule and movements, according to the book. Authorities have investigated whether either of the men in the attempted assassinations have ties to Iran but so far have not revealed a connection.
The details add new context to the president's decision last weekend to authorize a bombing mission to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities, although it is not yet known how much these events factored into Trump's decision.
The threats described in the book were not limited to Iran. And the book ends with Trump's inauguration in January, so it does not capture the possibility of any ongoing threats.
Iranian hit men tried to assassinate U.S. officials at least three times in the three years preceding Trump's election, as his campaign for president ramped up. Two of those attempts have been widely reported, but the incident involving Pompeo in Paris has not previously been disclosed. Also new is the account in the book that U.S. intelligence officials told Trump's team in September of last year that Iran had recruited hit teams that remained active inside the country.
In 2022, Iranians learned of the Paris hotel where Pompeo was staying and tried to assassinate him. He narrowly escaped, the book says, but it provides no other details.
The book's reporting is based on interviews with hundreds of people including senior campaign, White House and law enforcement officials as well as contemporaneous notes, emails, calendar entries and recordings.
The threat to Pompeo adds new perspective to Trump's decision in January to revoke security protection for him, former national security adviser John Bolton and another top aide who were facing threats from Iran, which the New York Times reported at the time. The president said, 'when you have protection, you can't have it for the rest of your life.'
Asked Thursday if the president is considering reinstating security protection for former officials including Pompeo given heightened tension with Iran, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, 'That's not under consideration right now.'
A spokesman for Pompeo declined to comment for this story. In his book published in 2023, 'Never Give an Inch,' Pompeo wrote that a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps charged with plotting to assassinate Bolton also sought to hire a contract assassin to kill Pompeo for $1 million.
Pompeo wrote that the plan was not 'hapless,' and that 'would-be attackers had cased homes and offices' as part of their preparations.
'This threat is but one of many that my family and I have experienced since leaving office,' he wrote. 'While details must be omitted here, other Americans — some former Trump administration officials, some senior American military leaders, and some ordinary Americans — remain on the Iranian kill list. Most disturbingly for us and our families, Iran's assassination campaigns have no expiration date.'
Trump had taken an aggressive stance toward Iran during his first term. He withdrew from an agreement with other Western nations in which Iran had pledged to eliminate or reduce aspects of its nuclear program. He reimposed economic sanctions. And he ordered a military operation that killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, prompting multiple Iranian attempts at vengeance starting with a flurry of missile strikes and later escalating to assassination plots, including the one that targeted Pompeo.
Previously reported attacks on U.S. soil have been linked to Iran, including an incident in 2022 in which a hit man tasked with killing an Iranian dissident got as far as her front door in Brooklyn with an assault rifle. That same year, U.S. authorities arrested the Revolutionary Guard member on charges of plotting to assassinate Bolton. Two years later, the day before Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, authorities arrested a Pakistani man who was planning to assassinate an unidentified American politician on Iran's behalf.
In addition, The Washington Post previously reported that Iran has cultivated relationships with criminal networks in the West to carry out its attacks, including hiring two members of Hells Angels biker gangs in a plot against a former Iranian military officer living under an assumed identity in Maryland.
In the aftermath of last weekend's bombing campaign, U.S. and other Western security officials have said they expected Iran or its proxies to respond similarly or perhaps with even more force than it did after Soleimani's death.
Iran was only one of many sources of threats to Trump's safety through 2024. But together, these threats changed the way his campaign functioned, according to the book. Security officials effectively transformed Mar-a-Lago, Trump's home and private club in Palm Beach, Florida, into an armed camp. They persuaded Trump to travel in a decoy plane owned by Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor who is now his special envoy to the Middle East.
Trump switched planes for one trip after Secret Service agents grew especially concerned about his jet, which could be vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles with fewer defensive systems than Air Force One, the book says.
That day, his campaign staff boarded the plane and waited for him to join. Instead, the door shut, and Chris LaCivita, one of the campaign managers, explained what was happening, the book says.
The book then recounts the following dialogue:
'The boss isn't flying with us today,' LaCivita said.
'So we're the bait?' one staffer said.
LaCivita said no, but he stressed the importance of making more unexpected moves.
'Right now,' he said, 'we're too predictable.'
On the other days, when Trump did travel in his own jet, Secret Service agents started flying decoy planes and driving down the runway behind him as he took off, extra precautions in case someone were to shoot at the jet. Trump's team began meeting at Mar-a-Lago for security sweeps instead of converging at the airport. One time, an agent yelled at staff as they boarded: 'Get on the plane as fast as you can! Keep your head down!'
The agents, the aides later learned, were worried about snipers and missiles.
Even still, Trump was the target of two assassination attempts — one at the July 13 rally in Butler, in which a bullet grazed the candidate's right ear, and the other on Sept. 15 in West Palm Beach, Florida, where authorities arrested a man who had pointed a rifle at a golf course where Trump was playing, leaving a note saying he had intended to kill him.
Authorities have not linked the incidents to Iran, but the investigations remain open.
Some of the Trump campaign's worries about Iran and other actors were previously reported by Axios. The new book offers additional details about internal reactions and steps taken.
As Trump's campaign continued, threats to his safety became omnipresent, the book says. When Trump visited the southern border, local police searched the desert for a man who threatened him on social media. Another time, agents stepped in when an inebriated man stumbled toward Trump on the patio of Mar-a-Lago.
Authorities warned Trump's team about poison and drones. They told Trump to avoid touching phones while taking selfies with supporters in case adversaries used them to expose him to chemical weapons. He greeted fans less frequently at airport rope lines.
Once, while leaving a rally on Long Island, the Secret Service told campaign managers LaCivita and Susie Wiles, now the White House chief of staff, that they were on alert for someone trying to shoot at the motorcade.
'I wish I had my f---ing rifle,' the book describes LaCivita as saying in the car. 'Give me my M4.'
Wiles reclined her seat all the way back, away from the windows.
Another time, on a trip to a farmers market in western Pennsylvania, Wiles got a call from the Secret Service saying there was an unknown drone overhead, following them down country roads an hour southeast of Pittsburgh, and they couldn't shake it.
Wiles thought to herself, 'This is it,' according to the book. The drone continued to follow them but never did anything.
As the threats mounted, Trump reduced his tendency to do what he wanted regardless of safety risks, becoming more deferential to his security team. When he spoke at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, someone got past the security screening and disappeared into the crowd. Trump, delayed for more than an hour, repeatedly asked the agents for an update. When an agent told him that they were still clearing the area, he nodded and said, 'I'm going to listen to my guys,' the book says.
The book describes a previously unreported scene in which people close to the campaign spoke with Erik Prince, the founder of military contractor Blackwater, who suggested asking for protection from Delta Force commandos, a covert U.S. Army Special Operations unit.
Then, on Sept. 24 of last year, national security officials briefed Trump at Mar-a-Lago that Iran had multiple hit teams inside the country.
As previously reported, U.S. authorities arrested an 'Iranian asset' six weeks later, in November 2024, claiming that the suspect had been tasked by the Iranians with 'surveilling and plotting to assassinate President-Elect Donald J. Trump.'
It is not clear if that arrest was related to the security threats Trump was briefed on in September. There have been no subsequent arrests of hired gunmen accused of stalking the candidate on behalf of Iran.
What is clear is that Iran weighed heavily on Trump's mind, according to the book. He asked multiple times if Iran was connected to the gunmen in Butler and West Palm Beach and grew increasingly frustrated with the acting director of the Secret Service, Ronald L. Rowe Jr., when he felt like he would not answer his questions.
Wiles, LaCivita and a spokesperson for Witkoff declined to comment for this story. Rowe could not immediately be reached for comment.
Trump's team began discussing how excited they would be to fire Rowe as their concern grew that they and Trump were in peril. Trump replaced Rowe in February.
'The apparent reluctance of our own government to address this situation immediately and with grave seriousness is concerning, to say the least,' Wiles wrote in an Oct. 2 email obtained by the authors.
She also asked for a plane equipped with defensive countermeasures, such as one of the Air Force's Boeing 757s typically used to transport senior U.S. officials. She never got them. So Trump and his team took their own precautions. Trump had a chemical weapons detection device installed in his office. At Mar-a-Lago, a bomb-detecting robot roamed the lawn. James Blair, campaign political director and now White House deputy chief of staff, borrowed an armored vest from a friend in the military and stored it under his desk. Some campaign staff brought guns to the office. The Republican National Committee stationed armed guards outside LaCivita's house in Virginia for the last several months of the campaign after he received three death threats.
The security concerns became so central that Trump's team worried that he would be in a worse mood and self-sabotage more often because it became harder for him to play golf.
By the end of the campaign, Trump felt the election had become bigger than his political victory. It was also about his survival.
'I have to win,' the book recounts him telling a visitor at Mar-a-Lago, newly fortified by Secret Service, reporting from the book shows. 'Stay alive and win. Because if I don't, we are f----ed.'
Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report. Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf, the authors of the book, '2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,' are current or former Washington Post reporters.