5 things to know about the apparent assassination attempt on Trump

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump wasn’t harmed by Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt as he golfed near his Florida club. The man suspected in the incident, Ryan Wesley Routh, camped outside the golf course in West Palm Beach with food and a rifle for nearly 12 hours, according to court documents filed Monday. He is accused of lying in wait for the former president before a Secret Service agent opened fire, thwarting the potential attack. Donald Trump was the target of what the FBI said “appears to be an attempted assassination” in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday. (AP Video by Audrey McAvoy) Routh, 58, faces charges of possessing a firearm despite a prior felony conviction and of possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Photos that show an AK-47 rifle, a backpack and a Go-Pro camera on a fence outside Trump International Golf Club taken after an apparent assassination attempt of Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, are displayed during a news conference at the Palm Beach County Main Library, Sunday. Sept. 15, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Stephany Matat) “Fight and die to stop aggression,” he posted on X in February 2023 about Ukraine. “Everyone should be outraged and helping.” In a video circulating online Routh said, “This is about good versus evil.” He also wrote separately on X, “I am going to fight and die for Ukraine,” and he even traveled there. Video shot by The Associated Press showed 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. That same day, Routh also visited a makeshift memorial to “Foreigners killed by Putin.” But Routh never served in the Ukrainian army or worked with its military, said Oleksandr Shahuri of the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Ukrainian Ground Forces Command. Routh’s politics, meanwhile, don’t appear consistently aligned to one party or the other. In June 2020, he offered a post on X directed at then-President Trump to say he would win reelection if he issued an executive order for the Justice Department to prosecute police misconduct. That year, he also posted in support of the Democratic presidential campaign of then-U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who has since left the party and endorsed Trump. However, in recent years, his posts suggest he soured on Trump, and he expressed support for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. In July, following the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania, Routh urged Biden and Harris to visit those wounded in the shooting at the hospital and to attend the funeral of a former fire chief killed at the rally. Voter records show he registered as an unaffiliated voter in North Carolina in 2012, most recently voting in person during the state’s Democratic Party primary in March 2024. Records show that while living in Greensboro, North Carolina, Routh had multiple run-ins with law enforcement. The top FBI official in the Miami, Jeffrey B. Veltri, said Routh has numerous felony charges for stolen goods between 1997 and 2010. He also was the subject of a closed investigation in 2019 when someone reported he was a felon in possession of a firearm, but Veltri said the tipster would not confirm making the report. Routh was convicted in 2002 of possessing a weapon of mass destruction, according to online North Carolina Department of Adult Correction records. Police crime scene vehicles are seen at Trump International Golf Club after police closed off the area following the apparent assassination attempt of Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump in West Palm Beach, Fla., Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. As the former president was moving through the fifth hole’s fairway, an agent who was visually sweeping the area of the sixth hole’s green saw the subject, armed with what he perceived to be a rifle, and immediately discharged his firearm, said acting Director Ronald Rowe Jr. of the U.S. Secret Service. Rowe said Routh “did not have a line of sight to the former president” and did not fire at Secret Service agents before fleeing. His security was bolstered days before the July 13 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania because of a threat on Trump’s life from Iran, U.S. officials said. Trump initially posted, “I AM SAFE AND WELL!” and subsequently praised the Secret Service for protecting him. But the former president pivoted Monday to the politics surrounding the incident, claiming — without evidence — that Biden and Harris comments that he is a threat to democracy had inspired the latest attempt on his life. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at,” Trump told Fox News Digital. In a subsequent post on his social media site Monday, Trump wrote that the left “has taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust.” He said “it will only get worse,” then veered into comments about immigration, even though there is no evidence immigrants were involved in the incident. Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the presidential election, posted on X that she was “glad he is safe. “America has suffered too many times the tragedy of an assassin’s bullet,” Biden said at the start of an address to the National HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia. Still, a presidential race already rocked by Biden giving up his reelection bid and the first attack on Trump now is being further shaped by a second one. “We are thankful that the former President was not harmed, but remain deeply concerned about political violence and condemn it in all of its forms,” Reps. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Jason Crow, D-Colo., said in a statement. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://apnews.com/564c56e167c3cdc6c50f6a2e91db9a6c