WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The suspect Assassination attempt on Donald Trump According to court documents filed Monday, the man camped outside a Florida golf course with food and a rifle for nearly 12 hours, lying in wait for the former president until Secret Service agents thwarted the attack and opened fire.
Authorities said the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, did not fire any shots, never saw Trump in sight and sped away after being shot by agents who found him. He was arrested in a neighboring county.
Routh, 58, appeared in federal court in West Palm Beach on Tuesday charged with violating federal firearms laws. The criminal proceedings came at a time when the final week of the presidential election was already marked by violence and chaos. No one was injured, but The incident was the second assassination attempt on Trump in as many months. Questions have been raised about the security provided to him at a time of heightened political rhetoric and what the director of the Secret Service called an “unprecedented and highly dynamic threat environment.”
As Trump’s Republican allies and some Democrats called for an explanation for how the gunman was able to get so close to Trump, Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe Jr. offered a fierce defense of his agents, saying they were “rising to this moment” despite the need for additional resources.
“Right now we’re putting red lines on them, but they’re rising to the challenge right now, rising to the moment,” Rowe said, citing recent political conventions and other major events that have required protective details.
Authorities continued to investigate Routh’s potential motives and actions in the days and weeks leading up to Sunday, when Secret Service agents protecting Trump found a gun protruding from bushes at a West Palm Beach golf course where Trump was playing.
Agents opened fire, and Routh fled to a sports utility vehicle, leaving behind a digital camera, a backpack, a loaded SKS-style assault rifle, and plastic bags containing food.
According to an FBI affidavit citing cellphone data, he was at the tree line of the golf course from 1:59 a.m. to 2:31 p.m. Special Agent in Charge Jeffrey Veltri of the FBI’s Miami field office said the FBI was continuing to investigate how long the Hawaii-born man had been in Florida.
Body camera footage Video of Routh’s arrest, posted to Facebook by the Martin County Sheriff’s Office on Monday, shows him walking backwards on the side of the road with his hands above his head before being handcuffed and taken away by officers.
The assassination attempt, coming just weeks after President Trump was shot and wounded by a gunman at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, has further fueled concerns that violence continues to be rife in the US presidential election.
Both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent in November’s presidential election, condemned the thwarted attack, with Harris saying in a post on X, “I’m glad he’s safe. Violence has no place in America.”
The FBI interviewed family, friends and colleagues and executed a series of search warrants to gather evidence. No motive has been released, and Routh asserted his right to an attorney during questioning.
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Authorities did not immediately release any new details about Routh’s background or allege a specific motive in the indictment.
Investigators are also reviewing Routh’s extensive online archive, which suggests he is a man with shifting political views, culminating in apparent contempt for Trump and outrage over global events involving China and especially Ukraine.
“Feel free to assassinate President Trump,” Rouse wrote about Iran in a book he apparently self-published in 2023 called “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War.” The book also describes the former president as a “fool” and a “clown” for both the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and his “epic blunder” of withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.
Routh wrote that he once voted for Trump and that he must take some of the blame on “the dumb kid who ended up being our next president.”
He also tried to recruit fighters. Ukraine defends itself against RussiaHe ran a website aimed at raising funds and recruiting volunteers to fight for Kiev.
Voter records show he was registered as an unaffiliated voter in North Carolina in 2012 and most recently voted in person in the state’s Democratic primary in March.
Federal campaign finance records show that Rouse also made 19 small donations totaling $140 since 2019 to ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates.
One of the charges alleges he illegally possessed a gun despite multiple felony convictions, including a 2002 conviction for possession of stolen property in North Carolina. The other alleges that the serial numbers had been obscured so they were unreadable to the naked eye, in violation of federal law. He was ordered to remain in custody because prosecutors argued he was a flight risk, but his lawyer declined to comment after Monday’s brief court appearance.
According to Veltri, a 2019 call to the FBI claiming that Routh was a felon in possession of a firearm had been resolved, but the FBI interviewed the caller, who did not confirm the original information, Veltri said. The FBI then passed the information on to local police in Honolulu.
of The arrest has drawn new attention to the difficulty of defending Trump.The Republican presidential nominee has made himself known not only on the campaign trail but also when he’s not on the campaign trail, often at his clubs and properties. Sunday’s outing to the golf course was an unofficial event, which in Secret Service lingo means it wasn’t on Trump’s official calendar.
Still, Rowe said the Secret Service had implemented the “highest level of defense” as instructed by President Biden, including “counter-sniper teams” and “tactical assets in the field.”
He said the Trump shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, made it clear that a paradigm shift was needed in how the Secret Service protects dignitaries.
“We need to move away from a reactive model and move to a responsive model. With regard to those protected by the Secret Service, new geopolitical events may arise that involve the United States in a physical conflict or other issues that lead to additional liabilities,” he said.
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Tucker, Durkin Richer and Long reported from Washington.
