A Look Back At The Assassination Attempts On Barack Obama

The following article contains mentions of gun violence and racism.

When Barack Obama became president, he transformed into one of the most powerful and recognizable people on the planet. And like presidents before him and those after him, he became a target for people with nefarious plans to cause him harm that were foiled by the U.S. Secret Service.

It was the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 that first spurred the U.S. Secret Service to begin protecting the president, and that has expanded into a law enforcement agency with thousands of employees all working to keep the president (and other high ranking government officials) safe. They get to know their charges well — a former Secret Service agent confirmed what Michelle and Barack Obama were really like — and a lot of what they do happens behind the scenes. However, with the release of court records and from press reports, we've learned about a number of attempts and plots on Barack's life.

Barack wasn't even president when there was a foiled plot to kill him. Barack had been a senator, then Michelle had agreed to let him run for president, and he became the Democratic presidential nominee in June 2008. In October 2008, court records in Tennessee confirmed that two young men, reportedly connected to white supremacy movements, were working on a plan to attack dozens of Black people with their actions culminating in an assassination attempt on Barack as the last thing they did. "They didn't believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying," Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives field office in Nashville, said, according to PBS. Both men eventually involved in the plan pled guilty and served time in prison.

21-year-old Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez from Idaho Falls was arrested in 2011 for firing a semi-automatic weapon at the second story of the south side of the White House, which is where the first family lives. Ortega-Hernandez fired eight or more shots from the AK-47 style weapon from a car on Constitution Avenue outside the White House. From around 750 feet away, one of the shots hit a window, which thankfully was bulletproof glass, while some others hit the Truman Balcony, close to where some Secret Service guards were standing watch. Ortega-Hernandez drove off, but shortly crashed his car and left the crash on foot. He was arrested five days later in Pennsylvania. Obama wasn't in the residence at the time of the shooting.

A friend of his said that before the shooting, Ortega-Hernandez had complained to him about Obama and that he'd said he "needed to kill" the president, as reported by The New York Times. In 2014, Ortega-Hernandez was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the shooting.

Multiple people sent ricin (a highly toxic poison if inhaled or otherwise consumed) to Barack Obama through the mail. James Everett Dutschke, from Tupelo, Mississippi, received a 25-year prison sentence for sending letters with ricin dust in them to Obama as well as to a senator and a judge. Another man, Paul Kevin Curtis was first arrested for the letters; however, he was later released and said that Dutschke had set him up for the crime.

In May 2013, Shannon Guess Richardson, an actress from Texas, also mailed letters with ricin powder in them. She sent one to Obama as well as one to Michael Bloomberg, who was New York City mayor at the time. The letter to Obama read: "What's in this letter is nothing compared to what ive got in store for you mr president. You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face," according to The Hollywood Reporter. She was sentenced to 18 years in prison after attempting to accuse her ex-husband of sending the letters.