Following a second unsuccessful assassination attempt on the lift of former President Donald Trump, the FBI, Department of Justice and U.S. Secret Service are working with local authorities in Florida to figure out what happened and whether the suspect acted alone.
Holding a joint news conference on Monday with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, those federal agencies provided an update to their investigation into the incident.
Ronald Rowe Jr., the acting director of Secret Service, said that the suspect in the case, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh of Hawaii, “did not have a line of sight to the former president.” He added that Routh didn’t fire at Secret Service agents before he fled the scene.
As Rowe explained:
“As former President Trump was moving through the fifth fairway across the [golf] course, and out of sight of the sixth green, the [Secret Service] agent who was visually sweeping the area of the sixth green saw the subject armed with what he perceived to be a rifle and immediately discharged his firearm.”
Agents who were stationed near Trump at the time evacuated him from the area once they heard gunshots.
Rowe said that protective measures the Secret Service has put in place following the first assassination attempt in July at a rally in Pennsylvania are working.
He spoke directly with Trump, and said the former president is “aware that he has the highest levels of protection” the agency can provide. The acting director also said agents on the scene did their jobs perfectly when they noticed that a man was poking a rifle through the bushes at the golf course Trump owns in South Florida.
Trump’s golf trip wasn’t on his schedule, so Secret Service put together a security plan quickly.
Jeffrey Beltri, the special agent in charge of the FBI Miami Field Office, added that the FBI has interviewed seven witnesses who were around the scene on Sunday. Agents in North Carolina and Hawaii have already begun to interview several of Routh’s former colleagues, friends and family members.
When Routh was arrested, agents found a SKS rifle and scope outside of the golf course. DNA has been collected from all of these items, and they are being analyzed and tested at the FBI headquarters in Virginia.
Investigators are now trying to figure out Routh’s movements “in the days and months” that preceded the incident on Sunday.
As Veltri said:
“Cellular data shows that (Routh) was in the vicinity of the golf course roughly 12 hours before the engagement with the United States Secret Service.”
Authorities added that there isn’t any information they have as of yet that would suggest Routh was acting with another person.
That being said, Veltri cautioned that their investigation is still ongoing, with authorities trying to confirm that he indeed acted alone.
Security around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and estate are not at the “highest level possible, officials said.
