5 things you should know about the apparent assassination attempt on Trump

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump was not injured in the suspected assassination attempt Sunday as he played golf near his Florida club, but the second attempt on his life in less than two months is likely to further shake an election cycle already marked by turmoil.

The suspected gunman, Ryan Wesley Routh, camped outside the West Palm Beach golf course for nearly 12 hours with food and a rifle, according to court documents filed Monday. He is accused of ambushing the former president before a Secret Service agent opened fire and thwarted the potential attack.

Here are five things you should know about the incident and the status of the investigation:

Who is the suspect?

Routh, 58, is charged with possessing a firearm despite a prior conviction and possessing a firearm with an obscured serial number. Additional charges are possible.

The suspect lived in North Carolina for most of his life before moving to Kaaawa, Hawaii, in 2018. According to an archived version of the company's website, he and his son ran a shed-building company.

Routh made a brief appearance in federal court in West Palm Beach on Monday. He had frequently posted on social media about the war in Ukraine and had a website where he tried to raise money and recruit volunteers to go to Kyiv to join the fight against the Russian invasion.

“Fight and die to stop the aggression,” he posted on X about Ukraine in February 2023. “Everyone should be outraged and help.” In a video circulating online, Routh said, “This is about good versus evil.”

He also wrote on X: “I will fight and die for Ukraine” and even traveled there.

Video shot by the Associated Press shows Routh at a small demonstration in Kyiv's Independence Square in April 2022, two months after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of the country. A placard he held read: “We cannot tolerate corruption and evil for more than 50 years. End Russia for our children.” Routh wore a blue vest with the U.S. flag on the back.

On the same day, Routh also visited a makeshift memorial to “foreigners killed by Putin.”

But Routh has never served in the Ukrainian army or collaborated with its military, says Oleksandr Shahuri of the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Ukrainian Ground Forces Command.

Routh's politics, meanwhile, do not seem to consistently lean toward one party or the other.

In June 2020, he posted a post on X aimed at then-President Trump, declaring that he would win re-election if the president issued an executive order ordering the Justice Department to prosecute police misconduct. That same year, he also posted a post supporting the Democratic presidential campaign of then-US Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who has since left the party and is supporting Trump.

However, his posts over the past few years suggest that he was antipathetic toward Trump, and he expressed support for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

In July, after Trump's assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, Routh called on Biden and Harris to visit those injured in the shooting in the hospital and attend the funeral of a former fire chief who was killed at the rally.

Voter records show he registered as an unaffiliated voter in North Carolina in 2012 and last voted in person in the Democratic Party primary in March 2024. Federal campaign finance records show that since 2019, Routh has made 19 small political donations totaling $140 using his Hawaii address through a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates.

Records show Routh had multiple run-ins with police while in Greensboro, North Carolina. The top FBI official in Miami, Jeffrey B. Veltri, said Routh faced numerous theft charges between 1997 and 2010. He was also the subject of a dropped investigation in 2019 when someone reported he was in possession of a firearm despite his convictions, but Veltri said the informant did not confirm the report.

Online records from the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction show that Routh was convicted of possession of a weapon of mass destruction in 2002.

How did that happen?

Authorities spotted a firearm sticking out of bushes on the West Palm Beach golf course, about 350 to 450 yards from Trump's hole. As the former president walked down the fairway of the fifth hole, an agent scanning the green of the sixth hole saw the suspect armed with what he believed to be a rifle and immediately fired his weapon, said acting director Ronald Rowe Jr. of the U.S. Secret Service.

Rowe said Routh “had no visual contact with the former president” and did not fire at Secret Service agents before fleeing.

Routh sped away before being caught in a neighboring county. Body camera footage of Routh's arrest shows him walking backwards along the side of the road with his hands above his head before being led away in handcuffs.

The suspect is said to have been at the tree line of the golf course between 1:59 a.m. and 1:31 p.m. on Sunday. A digital camera, a loaded SKS rifle with a telescopic sight and a plastic bag with food were seized in the area.

Trump's security detail is more heavily protected than that of some of his counterparts because of his high profile and campaign for the White House. His security was beefed up days before the July 13 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania because of a death threat against Trump from Iran, U.S. officials said.

What has Trump said since then?

Trump first posted: “I’M FINE!” and then praised the Secret Service for its protection.

But the former president pivoted to politics surrounding the incident on Monday, claiming – without evidence – that Biden and Harris' comments that he was a threat to democracy inspired the latest attempt on his life.

“Their rhetoric is getting me shot,” Trump told Fox News Digital. In a follow-up post on his social media page on Monday, Trump wrote that the left had “taken politics in our country to a whole new level of hate, abuse and distrust.” He said “it's only going to get worse” and then moved on to comments about immigration, although there is no evidence that immigrants were involved in the incident.

The former president made these remarks despite his own long history of inflammatory campaign rhetoric and calls for the imprisonment or prosecution of his political opponents.

What do Biden and Harris say?

Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in the presidential election, posted on X that she was “glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.”

Biden also avoided political aspects in his response. He said on Monday that the Secret Service “needs more help” and called on Congress to provide additional funding to support the agency.

“America has suffered the tragedy of an assassin's bullet too many times,” Biden said at the start of a speech at the National HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia. “This doesn't solve anything. It just tears the country apart. We must do everything we can to stop this from happening, not give it oxygen.”

What happens next?

Trump has announced no changes to his schedule and spoke live on X from his Mar-a-Lago resort Monday night.

Yet the presidential campaign, already rocked by Biden's decision not to seek re-election and the first attack on Trump, is now being further impacted by a second. The leaders of a bipartisan congressional task force investigating Trump's shooting in Pennsylvania said they had requested a Secret Service briefing.

“We are grateful that no harm came to the former president, but remain deeply concerned about political violence and condemn it in all its forms,” ​​Reps. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said in a statement.