What to know about the apparent Trump assassination attempt

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump wasn’t harmed by Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt as he golfed near his Florida club. The second attack on his life is likely to further unsettle an election cycle already marked by upheaval.
The man suspected in the incident, Ryan Wesley Routh, camped outside the golf courses 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.
READ MORE: With 50 days to go, presidential campaign goes on after latest apparent Trump assassination attempt
Here are five things to know about what happened and where the investigation stands.
Routh, 58, faces charges of possessing a firearm despite a prior felony conviction for possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. He is not alleged to have fired any shots, though additional and possibly more serious charges are possible.
The suspect lived in North Carolina for most of his life before moving in 2018 to Kaaawa, Hawaii. He and his son operated a company building sheds, according to an archived version of the webpage for the business.
Routh appeared briefly in federal court in West Palm Beach on Monday. He had previously posted frequently posted on social media about the war in Ukraine and had a website where he sought to raise money and recruit volunteers to go to Kyiv to join the fight against the Russian invasion.
“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 even traveled there.
Video shot by the AP 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. A placard he was holding said: “We cannot tolerate corruption and evil for another 50+ years. End Russia for our kids.” Routh wore a blue vest with the U.S., flag on the back.
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. Federal campaign finance records show Routh made 19 small political donations totaling $140 since 2019 using his Hawaii address to ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates.
Records show that while living in Greensboro, North Carolina, Routh had multiple run-ins with law enforcement. He was convicted in 2002 of possessing a weapon of mass destruction, according to online North Carolina Department of Adult Correction records.
The records do not provide details about the case. But a News & Record story from 2002 says a man with the same name was arrested after a three-hour standoff with police. The story says he was pulled over during a traffic stop, put his hand on a gun and barricaded himself inside a roofing business. He owned the roofing company, according to state incorporation filings.
Roth was arrested Sunday afternoon, after authorities spotted a firearm poking out of shrubbery on the West Palm Beach golf course around 400 to 500 yards from where Trump was playing. A Secret Service agent assigned to Trump’s security detail saw the suspect and opened fire.
Routh sped away before being captured in a neighboring county. Body camera footage of Routh’s arrest showed him walking backward with his hands over his head on the side of a road before being handcuffed and led away.
The suspect is believed to have been positioned at the tree line of the golf course from about 1:59 a.m. to 1:31 p.m. Sunday, according to an FBI affidavit that cites cellphone data. A digital camera, a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope and a plastic bag containing food were recovered from the area.
Trump’s protective detail has been higher than some of his peers because of his high visibility and his campaign to seek the White House again. 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 President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala 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.
The former president made those comments despite his own long history of inflammatory campaign rhetoric and advocacy for jailing or prosecuting his political enemies.
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 politics in his reaction. He said Monday “thank God the president is OK” while also saying that the Secret Service “needs more help” and urging Congress to provide additional resources to help the agency.
“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. “It solves nothing. It just tears the country apart. We must do everything we can to prevent it and never give it any oxygen.”
In his speech, the president added that acting Secret Service director Ronald Rowe was in Florida “assessing what happened and determining whether any further adjustments need to be made to ensure” Trump’s safety.
Trump hasn’t announced any changes to his schedule and is set to speak live on X on Monday night from his Mar-a-Lago resort to launch his sons’ crypto platform. Harris met with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters at the 1.3 million-member group’s headquarters in Washington.
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. The leaders of a congressional bipartisan task force investigating Trump’s Pennsylvania shooting said they have requested a briefing by the Secret Service.
“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,” Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., said in a statement.
Weissert reported from Washington.