Second Assassination Attempt on Donald Trump

Donald Trump has said that he is safe and well After what the FBI described as a second apparent assassination attempt against him. The Secret Service agent spotted an assault rifle poking out of bushes on the former President’s Florida golf course within several hundred meters of where he was playing. The agent opened fire. The suspect who fled in a car was later arrested. Police have searched his home in North Carolina. Joe Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris both expressed relief that Mr. Trump had not been hurt. Security had been tightened around the Republican presidential election candidate after an assassination attempt in July. Graham Satchell reports.

They blocked it off.

The I-95 in Florida, and pictures taken by a passing motorist show a large number of police surrounding a vehicle. Law enforcement officers have just detained a man suspected of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump. He was driving the black car seen here at the side of the road. The former president was playing golf on his own course when a number of gunshots were heard. A Secret Service agent had spotted a rifle being pointed from bushes at the edge of the course.

They have an agent that jumps one hole ahead of time to where the president was at, and he was able to spot this rifle barrel sticking out of the fence and immediately engaged that individual at which time the individual took off.

The police recovered what they say is an AK-47 style rifle with a scope, 2 backpacks containing ceramic tiles and a GoPro camera.

We are not sure right now if the individual was able to take a shot at our agents, but for sure, our agents were able to engage with the subject.

And you know, that’s a little bit old, that chart.

It is just a matter of weeks since the last assassination attempt on Donald Trump. He was shot and injured at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Just moments later, he was on his feet and shouting, “Fight, fight” to the crowd. After this latest attempt, the former president put out a brief statement. “There were gunshots in my vicinity,” he said. “But before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first. I am safe and well. Nothing will slow me down. I will never surrender.” Vice President Kamala Harris said, “I’ve been briefed on reports of gunshots fired near former President Trump and his property in Florida. I’m glad he’s safe. Violence has no place in America.”

(02:43)
Police have now raided the former home of the suspect in this case. He’s been named by American Media as 58-year-old Ryan Routh. On social media, Routh claims to have fought against Russian forces in Ukraine. Donald Trump left his golf under heavy security a few hours after the thwarted attack. There will be questions about how a man with a rifle was able to get so close to the former president, but Donald Trump has praised the Secret Service for their response and says he will continue to campaign this week. Graham Satchell, BBC News.

A correspondent, Tom Bateman, is outside the Palm Beach golf course where the incident took place. He sent this update.

Well over the coming hours, there will be much focus on the suspect named by US media as Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old former construction worker from North Carolina. What the police have said is that the suspect was apprehended around 40 miles north of here in a vehicle that they had traced from the scene here, a black Nissan they said spotted by an eyewitness, that was then stopped by the local sheriff north of here on the Interstate Highway, and the suspect apprehended and the vehicle then searched. The suspect is now being held in a jail in the county there. And what we expect in the next few hours in the morning is that that person will be transferred back south down here to West Palm Beach and the potential then for a court appearance. We heard from law enforcement officials during that news conference earlier that if they decide to book him, they can then press charges locally here. But there’s also, of course, the distinct possibility of federal charges because there is an FBI investigation now leading all of this.

(04:39)
And to give you a sense of the geography here, just behind me is the sign there for the Trump International Golf Club. This corner here behind the bushes here is hole six of the golf course. Now that is where Donald Trump was heading towards. He was between the fifth and the sixth holes according to the police. And it was that advanced security sweep by the Secret Service that spotted the barrel of that assault rifle pointing through a chain-link fence. And it was that very fact that it appears ultimately protected Donald Trump because those Secret Service agents fired towards the suspect. What remains unclear is whether or not the suspect fired either at that Secret Service agent or at Donald Trump himself. We don’t have that confirmed yet, and the police and the FBI were asked that question in the news conference. They say that whether or not a shot was fired or shots were fired by the suspect still remains part of their investigation.

Tom Bateman. The BBC Verify team has been looking at social media profiles which match the name of the alleged suspect, Ryan Routh. Here’s our news analysis editor, Ros Atkins.

Our colleagues at CBS have spoken to sources who have indicated that the suspect is called Ryan Routh, and with that name, BBC Verify was able to start looking at different social media platforms to see if we could find accounts that match that name. And we have, we’ve managed to identify several social media accounts in that name. We’ve then cross-referenced some of the content on those accounts with an image that allegedly shows a man being arrested at the scene on the highway near to Donald Trump’s golf course. If we look at those accounts, a number of themes emerge. First of all, go back to 2020 and there is a post on Twitter now called X, in which the man directly addresses Donald Trump and says, “I voted for you in 2016.” But then says that, “We all were greatly disappointed. I will be glad when you are gone,” he says in this tweet, so that was back in 2020.

(06:52)
More recently, a lot of the social media output on these accounts has been around Ukraine. We know that the man in these accounts is involved in organizing for foreign volunteers to go to Ukraine to join the fight against Russia. He featured, he was quoted in an article on just that subject in the New York Times last year. There’s also a video that BBC Verify has seen on YouTube, which appears to show him in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, again, talking about the issue of the West’s approach to Ukraine and particularly about the issue of volunteers coming to Ukraine. And it’s clear in a number of these posts across a number of platforms that he is frustrated about the West’s approach to Ukraine. He feels that more should be done. So that is coming out again and again.

(07:38)
Of course we have to be cautious about this because we’re still learning details about who this person is and we don’t have a huge amount of confirmed detail from the authorities themselves. However, it is relevant based on that sourcing from CBS and based on the research that BBC Verify has done, that these themes are coming out from those social media accounts.

Ros Atkins. Well my colleague in Washington, Lucy Hockings has been speaking to a former US Navy SEAL and FBI agent, Jonathan Gilliam.

Well, when there’s an assassination attempt, and it is officially determined that it was an assassination attempt against a sitting president, a former president, or a nominee for president of one of the parties, the FBI will take over that. They take over that investigation. But what you have to realize is when we use those words like they take over the investigation, the reality is that the FBI works closely with all law enforcement in most of these types of cases. It actually becomes basically a joint task force so they can reach out to not only other FBI offices, but also other law enforcement entities where this individual may have been known. They will also work with intelligence agencies to see if any of the information comes back about this individual where he may have been part of a state-sponsored assassination attempt or any type of terrorist group.

And Jonathan, what do you make of the evidence that the FBI has got so far? Because I’ve heard it described here in the US as being a goldmine given we’ve got the GoPro, we’ve got the gun, we have the car, all sorts of crucial pieces of evidence that the FBI will have already.

Well, it’s very telling and it’s telling on many different levels. One, the fact … Let’s look at both the July assassination attempt and this assassination attempt. This is twice that a shooter has been able to get within 500 yards, which for that particular weapon is an SKS, it’s an AK-47 Russian style AK-47 is … The max effective range is 450 yards, especially with a scope. So Trump was estimated to be within 400, 500 yards of this individual. So twice now, somebody has been able to get within that distance. That’s something that the FBI should take into account because now it’s gone beyond just a simple dropping of the ball of tactics where these threat assessments are not being done properly.

(10:13)
The individual himself left what appears to be not just a backpack, but possibly two ballistic plates that are tied and hung up against that fence. And he had the rifle in between those, which meant that he was ready for a potential shootout. He wanted to record it, and then he went to the car and they located the vehicle with him in it. The GoPro, if he had any other issues or things that were recorded on there. And his social media, this individual, unlike July, has not had his social media scrubbed. So the FBI will be able to look at that and determine who this guy is as far as social media tells, and then hopefully they get his phones and things like that and be able to scrub those as well to see if he has any other contacts that could have been involved.

Former FBI agent, Jonathan Gilliam.