The Secret Service foiled a plot by terror group Islamic State (ISIS) to assassinate United States President, Donald Trump in November 2017, less than a year after he took office.
According to Daily Beast, a man had taken to social media to reveal how he would kill the US President during a summit, ASEAN 50, in Manila, the Philippines.
The unidentified man tweeted, “Gonna be in Manila the same time as Trump… I’ll take one for the team lads,” a day before President Trump was due in the country.
The tweet was accompanied by the photo of Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
Days before the suspect’s threat, ISIS issued a series of threats—via video—that featured a picture of Trump filled with bullets, and a message urging jihadists to “lie in wait” and “ambush” him in the Philippines.
However, before the suspect could carry out his threat, a Secret Service agent in Trump’s security detail came across the tweet.
Further checks on the suspect’s Instagram page turned up a photo of him holding a book: How to Kill: The Definitive History of the Assassin.
The agent then tracked the IP address with which the suspect tweeted the message and discovered he was indeed in Manila, and just few kilometres from the president’s hotel and a couple of other social media posts showed the suspect was travelling towards the hotel.
The Secret Service continued to monitor the suspect.
However, the situation became tense when hours before Trump landed, they lost the suspect’s exact location.
He was later traced to Luneta Park, which laid a little over one kilometre from the hotel Trump was scheduled to stay.
With the aid of the Philippines National Police, the Secret Service were able to apprehend the suspect as he was meeting with another person.
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