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Robert Pickett: Firing Shots on GW Bush

The following article on Robert Pickett is an excerpt from Mel
Ayton’s Hunting the President: Threats, Plots, and Assassination
Attempts—From FDR to Obama. It is available for order now from
Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

George W. Bush was subjected to several very serious threats to
his life. Robert Pickett was an accountant with the Internal
Revenue Service who had been fired from his job in 1988 because
of incompetence and poor work attendance. But Pickett believed
he was dismissed because he reported a colleague who had been
“violating regulations.” He spent years trying to get reinstated
to his job. On February 7, 2001, two weeks after the first
inauguration of President Bush, Pickett, still simmering over
the firing, visited the White House armed with a five-shot
Taurus .38 caliber special revolver.

Pickett fired some errant shots in the general direction of the
executive mansion. A nearby police patrol car immediately pulled
up, and an officer engaged Pickett. A standoff ensued, with
Pickett alternately threatening to shoot himself and others.
After ten minutes, Pickett was shot in the knee by a Secret
Service agent and taken to the hospital. President Bush, who was
exercising in the residence area of the White House at the time,
was never in danger.

Pickett was originally charged with discharging a firearm during
a crime, which, if he had been found guilty, would have brought
a ten-year mandatory sentence. But Pickett made a plea agreement
and entered a guilty plea to a local firearms violation and an
“Alford plea” (acknowledging there was enough evidence to
convict him but not admitting he was entirely guilty) to
assaulting a federal officer. In July 2001, Pickett was
sentenced to three years at the Federal Medical Center in
Rochester, followed by three years of probation. He was released
on September 19, 2003.

https://www.historyonthenet.com/robert-pickett/
 

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