What started out as a normal round of golf for former President Donald Trump on Sunday turned into another close encounter of a lifetime.
The former president was on the fifth fairway at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, when a lone Secret Service agent spotted the barrel of a rifle protruding from the fence near the sixth hole.
The hidden sniper was Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old construction worker with a strange past, riddled with failed schemes and serious crimes.
What started out as a normal round of golf for former President Donald Trump on Sunday turned into another close encounter of a lifetime.
The suspected gunman has been identified as registered Democrat Ryan Wesley Routh, 58.
The FBI now claims Routh never had the Republican candidate in his line of sight, nor did he fire a shot.
But that hardly absolves the security team charged with protecting the former president of blame, since Routh, armed with a long-range rifle and scope, was able to get within 500 yards of Trump.
Now, DailyMail.com is investigating the circumstances of Trump’s second brush with calamity, the multitude of unanswered questions and how the Secret Service could have failed the former president, yet again.
An inside job?
“The most important question to answer is: How did the potential assassin know he was in that location at that time?” former FBI Director Chris Swecker said Sunday.
‘There are only three possible answers: he guessed and got very lucky; he kept tabs on Trump and followed him to the golf course; or he had inside information about Trump’s agenda. The last answer is scary and has implications that someone else was involved.’
Trump’s arrival at the camp on Sunday morning in a large motorcade would have been obvious to anyone inspecting the property.
It is still unclear whether Routh received any advance warning about the former president’s plans.
Marin County, Florida, Sheriff Will Snyder said how Routh calculated where Trump would be was the “million-dollar question.”
How did security fail?
The former president frequently plays golf at his sprawling 27-hole, 200-acre Trump International golf course in West Palm Beach, which is just a stone’s throw from his Mar-a-Lago home.
But Trump’s Sunday outing – with his friend, Republican donor and real estate investor Steve Witkoff – was not on his public agenda.
For that reason, acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said Monday that Secret Service agents did not conduct a security review of the course before Trump’s golf outing.
“Yesterday was an unofficial move,” Row said. “The president wasn’t even supposed to go there.”
Had officers searched the property, they might have discovered Routh’s black Nissan Rouge parked along the club’s eastern perimeter.
At 1:35 p.m. Sunday, an officer spotted Routh’s gun and opened fire, causing the gunman to drop his rifle. The suspect fled the scene in a vehicle and was captured less than an hour later by local police.
Private security expert and former Department of Homeland Security adviser Carrie Bachner called the incident a “100 percent” security failure.
Why did Routh choose the sixth hole?
Investigators analyzed data obtained from Routh’s cellphone provider that indicated he first arrived near the golf course at 1:59 a.m. Sunday morning.
The location of his device turned out to be near the tree line where he was confronted by the Secret Service agent.
This means that Routh was in the area for at least 12 hours.
Photographers have long been able to get close to Trump as he plays at the West Palm Beach golf course, but they typically do not take photos near the sixth hole.
But that’s where police discovered a sniper’s nest, with a GoPro camera, two backpacks and his rifle.
The bags were filled with ceramic tiles that investigators suspect were intended to provide protection from gunfire.
As of Monday, the FBI has not released any new details about what Routh was doing during those 12 hours.
What was on Routh’s mind?
The gunman’s motive remains a mystery and the investigation is in its early stages.
But over the past 48 hours, a clearer picture of Routh’s life has begun to emerge, including frequent run-ins with the law, a series of anti-Trump political posts of late and a bizarre engagement with the war effort in Ukraine.
Oran Routh, his 35-year-old son, told DailyMail.com that his father hated Trump like “any reasonable person” but insisted his father was not capable of violence.
Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said Monday that Secret Service agents did not conduct a security review of the course before Trump’s golf game.
In 2016, Routh voted for Trump. Then, in 2024, he backed Nikki Haley for the Republican nomination.
However, public financial records also show that Routh donated small amounts of money to Democrats in 2020.
In 2023, Routh self-published a book, ‘Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,’ in which he called on Iran to assassinate the former president.
In his rambling prose, he also called the Republican candidate a “buffoon,” a “fool” and “brainless.”
Was Routh on law enforcement’s radar?
Routh’s personal involvement in the Ukrainian war effort dates back to at least 2022, when he traveled to the war-torn nation and tried to recruit foreign soldiers to help fight Russia.
However, Routh’s work there attracted negative attention from both Ukrainians and Americans.
In fact, he acted so erratically during his years as a pro-Ukraine activist that Americans who knew him during that period alerted U.S. authorities to his behavior.
Chelsea Walsh, a nurse who met Routh on several occasions in Kyiv, said his violent threats troubled her so much that she expressed her concerns to a Customs and Border Protection officer in an hour-long interview when she returned to the United States in June 2022.
Walsh told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that Routh was among the most dangerous Americans he encountered during his time there.
Over the past 48 hours, a clearer picture of Routh’s life has begun to emerge, including frequent run-ins with the law and a series of anti-Trump political posts of late.
Sunday’s incident comes just two months after another attempted assassin’s bullet grazed Trump’s right ear, narrowly missing the fatal shot.
Routh also tried to join the Ukrainian frontline forces, but was rejected by the military and was branded “delusional” by volunteers he encountered.
How did Routh get a gun?
Routh has an extensive criminal record of at least 100 criminal charges dating back to 1998, including multiple felonies.
A local newspaper report in 2002 noted that he barricaded himself in a business and engaged in a three-hour standoff with police officers in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina.
In a separate incident, he was charged with misdemeanors including hit-and-run, resisting arrest and violating the concealed weapons law.
After such an extensive criminal record, Routh was not legally allowed to possess a firearm.
However, court documents released Monday indicate he was in possession of an SKS-style rifle, which is a Russian-designed semi-automatic weapon, with an obliterated serial number.
The weapon was modified with a scope for long-range aiming.
The rifle is not manufactured in Florida, leading the FBI to believe it was obtained from out of state or abroad.
Why was Trump’s security still so weak?
Palm Beach County, Florida, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters Sunday that if Trump were president, he would have had more security, even claiming the president’s protection was sufficient.
“Look, in the end the system worked,” he said.
Law enforcement discovered a sniper nest with a GoPro camera, two backpacks and his rifle, where Routh had been hiding on the perimeter of the camp.
The hidden bags were filled with ceramic tiles that investigators suspect were intended to provide protection from gunfire.
But Secret Service chief strategy officer Matthew Noyes admitted after the July assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, that the agency had become “spread too thin.”
He cited recruitment problems and lack of resources.
Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe later said he “ordered a paradigm shift” after the Butler shooting, during which a 20-year-old man was able to climb onto a rooftop with a clear line of sight 130 yards from the president.
But just two months after the Butler incident, questions remain as to why these glaring safety issues have not been resolved.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, is demanding that an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Sunday’s shooting be incorporated into an ongoing probe into the failures at Butler.
Additionally, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has announced that his administration is conducting an independent investigation into the incident at Trump’s golf course.