Suspect never had sight of Trump on golf course, officials say
Investigators say the man who appeared to have been planning to assassinate former President Donald Trump with a rifle waited near a golf course for about 12 hours before he was spotted by the Secret Service. According to a criminal complaint released Monday, the man faces two federal gun charges: possessing a firearm as a felon and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
The defendant, Ryan W. Routh, 58, did not have Trump in his sightline and did not fire his semiautomatic rifle during the confrontation with the Secret Service on Sunday afternoon, the agency’s acting director, Ronald Rowe, said at a news conference. The FBI’s top agent in Miami said the bureau had no information that Routh had been working with anybody else.
Routh, who wore a blue inmate jumpsuit to his initial appearance in a federal courtroom in Florida earlier Monday, called Trump a “buffoon” in a rambling book titled “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War” that he published himself last year. In one angry passage about the former president’s dismantling of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, appears to suggest that readers – or perhaps Iran – were “free to assassinate Trump.”
According to a criminal complaint, cellphone data indicated that Routh was in the woods near Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, for nearly half a day before a Secret Service agent spotted what appeared to be the barrel of a rifle and opened fire. The complaint detailed the subsequent discovery of a loaded SKS-style rifle – a semiautomatic rifle developed by the Soviets in the 1940s – with a scope, as well as food and a digital camera.
The episode, particularly the many hours Routh apparently spent so close to the course, cast fresh doubts on the Secret Service’s protective abilities after a would-be killer got near Trump for the second time in about two months. President Joe Biden told reporters Monday that the Secret Service “needs more help.”
Here is what else to know.
– Trump blames Democrats:On Monday, Trump blamed what he called Democrats’ “inflammatory language” for the episode, urging them to tone down their speech even as he called them the “enemy from within” and “the real threat.”
– The suspect: Routh told the New York Times in 2023 that he had traveled to Ukraine and wanted to recruit Afghan soldiers to fight there. The Times reporter who interviewed him recalled thinking at the time that Routh was out of his depth. Federal court documents show that he was convicted of a felony in December 2002 for “possessing a weapon of mass death and destruction.” The Greensboro News and Record newspaper reported that he was arrested in 2002 in Greensboro, North Carolina, after barricading himself inside a building with a fully automatic weapon. Routh had been the subject of a 2019 investigation by the bureau based on a tip that he was in possession of a firearm as a felon, the FBI said.
– The charges:
Possession of a firearm as a felon is the more serious of the two charges against Routh, carrying a prison sentence of up to 15 years, according to the complaint. Possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number carries a sentence of up to five years.
– Campaign plans:
The Trump campaign has not announced any changes to the candidate’s schedule for the week. He is expected to appear on a livestream to introduce a new cryptocurrency business at 8 p.m. Eastern time Monday. On Tuesday, he is expected to hold a town hall event in Flint, Michigan, moderated by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, and a rally Wednesday in Uniondale, New York.