The FBI said Donald Trump was the target of “what appears to be an attempted assassination” at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday.
The former president said he was safe and well.
Secret Service agents shot at a man hiding in shrubbery and pointing an AK-style rifle with a scope as Trump was about 400 to 500 yards away on the course.
Photos shared by law enforcement showed two black bags hanging from a chain-link fence in the shrubbery outside the course, with the firearm propped up in between them and pointed through a gap in the fence. A GoPro camera was hanging on the fence to the side.
It was the second time in nine weeks there has been an assaasination attempt on Trump.
Authorities identified Ryan Wesley Routh as the gunman, and said he was arrested in a neighboring county after fleeing in an SUV.
Records show Routh, 58, lived in North Carolina for most of his life before moving to Kaaawa, Hawaii, in 2018. There, he and his son operated a company building sheds, according to an archived version of the webpage for the business.
Routh was convicted in 2002 of possessing a weapon of mass destruction, according to online North Carolina Department of Adult Correction records.
The story says he was pulled over during a traffic stop, put his hand on a gun and held off police for three hours when he barricaded himself inside a roofing business.
Routh was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and possessing a weapon of mass destruction, “referring to a fully automatic machine gun,” according to the News & Record.
Routh 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. A photo of Routh posted on the webpage shows him smiling, wearing a T-shirt and jacket adorned with American flags.
In June 2020, he made a post on X that asked then-President Trump to win reelection by issuing an executive order directing the Department of Justice 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 shifted her support to Trump.
However, in recent years, his posts appear to have soured on Trump and 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 attend the funeral of a fireman killed at the rally.
Routh made 19 small donations totaling $140 since 2019 using his Hawaii address to ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates, according to federal campaign finance records.
