‘Free Palestine’ activist tried to assassinate Biden in 2024 over Gaza, US feds say

Federal investigators arrested an Alabama man this week for attempting to assassinate then-US president Joe Biden in 2024, the latest in a string of violent incidents or attempted attacks in the US tied to the anti-Israel movement.

Adam Benjamin Hall, 23, allegedly brought a firearm to a debate between Biden and Donald Trump, then the Republican candidate, held in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27,  2024, to kill Biden. Hall failed to enter the debate, federal prosecutors said.

The plan came to light more than a year later, when in October 2025, Hall told fellow students at Wallace State Community College in Alabama about his attempt to assassinate the president. He said he had a revolver with two rounds, claiming that was enough to kill Biden because he was a “pretty decent shot and Joe Biden was or is like one foot and four toes in the grave already.”

Hall told the other students that he had been distressed by images of maimed Palestinian children, had written a “manifesto,” and had nearly failed out of college due to his obsession with the assassination plan.

Local police informed the US Secret Service about Hall’s comments the following day. The federal investigators interviewed one of the students who heard of the plans and Hall’s parents. The parents said they learned of the assassination plan about a month afterward and confiscated the revolver, a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson. Hall lived with his parents in the small, rural community of Crane Hill, Alabama, about a three-hour drive from Atlanta.

Hall later told investigators that he had been upset by images online, presumably from Gaza, and decided he needed to do something about it, and looked up plans for the presidential debate hosted by CNN. He bought the revolver in cash, and drove from Alabama to Atlanta, but accidentally went to a closed CNN location. He scouted the area to prepare for the attack, only realizing his mistake several hours later, after the debate had ended, the criminal complaint said.

He called his ex-girlfriend from the area of the debate, saying that he had planned to sneak into the event but that there were too many police, and that he would attempt again at the next presidential debate.

Investigators recovered Hall’s manifesto on his phone. It was addressed “to all the Palestinian journalists.”

“May you accept my deepest apologies on behalf of the people of the US empire. We are all guilty of allowing this needless bloodshed,” he said. “Hopefully, my actions snap you all awake.”

“Our enemies are not in any other country but our own and Israel’s,” he said, defending Russia, China and Iran. He described “globalist elites” as “tumors” who were robbing society and controlling government.

“It’s time we overthrow these bastards and threaten to pull a fucking D-Day on Tel Aviv,” he wrote, closing the missive with the slogan, “Free Palestine,” followed by a Palestinian flag emoji.

He wrote the manifesto an hour before the debate began, and his phone was located three blocks away from the event when it started.

A judge issued a warrant for Hall’s arrest on Monday and he was brought in on Wednesday.

Hall was charged with interstate stalking in the federal Northern District of Georgia court. The US Department of Justice said that additional charges may be filed as the investigation proceeds.

Anti-Israel activists have been tied to repeated acts or attempts at political violence in the US.

Members of a far-left group that protested against Israel, and whose leader described herself as a “Hamas fangirl,” were arrested last month for plotting a mass bombing campaign in California. Prosecutors released photos showing that the group had assembled bomb-making materials alongside signs that said “Free Palestine.”

The alleged killer of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, last year shouted “Free Palestine” while being arrested at the scene of the murders. So did a suspect who allegedly shot up a wedding in New Hampshire in September.

The attacker in a mass shooting at a Catholic school in Minnesota in August wrote “Free Palestine” and other anti-Israel and antisemitic slogans in a notebook and on her weapons. The man who firebombed a march for Israeli hostages in Colorado last year, killing an elderly woman, shouted “Free Palestine” during that attack.

The man who torched the home of Jewish Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro last year said he was motivated by Shapiro’s “plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

Federal authorities have thwarted repeated attempts to attack US Jewish targets since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.

A series of surveys has found that further left and younger Americans are increasingly open to political violence.