Key events
Here is Palm Beach county sheriff Ric Bradshaw earlier:
Former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe is speaking now on CNN.
He speculates that the suspect’s positioning on the golf course, “Would indicate that he knew the layout of the course,” and that it seems to show a “high degree of planning”, but that the question is how the suspect knew that Trump would be playing today.
He said that it may have just been luck.
Trump campaign leaders are crediting the Secret Service with keeping the former president safe following an apparent assassination attempt in Florida, the Associated Press reports.
In an email sent to staff Sunday evening, senior campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles wrote, “Thankfully, no one was injured at the Golf Course. President Trump and everyone accompanying him are safe thanks to the great work of the United States Secret Service,” they wrote.
They added that campaign staffers’ safety is “always our top priority” and asked those receiving the email to “remain vigilant” and “observant and maintain a constant level of situational awareness.”
It is not clear whether the incident will affect Trump’s campaign schedule. He was set to speak from Florida about cryptocurrency live on Monday night on the social media site X for the launch of his sons’ crypto platform, the Associated Press reports.
He planned a town hall Tuesday in Flint, Michigan with his former press secretary, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, followed by a rally on Wednesday on New York’s Long Island.
What we know so far
If you’re just joining us, here is what we know so far:
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The Republican presidential candidate and former US president Donald Trump is “safe and unharmed” after US Secret Service agents opened fire when they spotted a person with a firearm at the Trump international golf course west of Palm Beach, where the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort home is located. Law enforcement officials said the gunman was in some bushes near the property line of the golf course when Secret Service agents, who were clearing holes ahead of where Trump was playing, spotted a rifle barrel in the bushes.
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Agents engaged the gunman and fired at least four rounds of ammunition about 1.30pm local time. The gunman then dropped his rifle, two backpacks and other items and fled in a black Nissan car. A witness, the sheriff said, saw the gunman and managed to take photos of his car and license plate. In a press conference, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said a male suspect had been detained by authorities. According to Bradshaw, the suspect was relatively calm. The gunman was spotted about 300 to 500 yards from where Trump was playing, Secret Service officials said.
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The FBI called the incident “what appears to be an attempted assassination of the former president”. The FBI and other law enforcement officials said the suspect had a scope on an AK47 rifle, and a GoPro camera with which he apparently intended to record footage and two backpacks with ceramic tiles in it.
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The suspect who was arrested was named as Ryan Wesley Routh, three law enforcement officials told the Associated Press. Fox news and CNN also reported the same name, citing law enforcement sources. Authorities have not publicly identified the suspect. The Guardian has not confirmed this independently.
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In an email to supporters, Trump said: “There were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I AM SAFE AND WELL!”. He added, “Nothing will slow me down. I will NEVER SURRENDER!”. Trump was injured in an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania on 13 July.
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The White House said in a statement that President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris had been briefed about the incident and were relieved to know that Trump is safe. “Violence has no place in America,” Harris said in a social media post. Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz issued a statement, posting on X: “Gwen and I are glad to hear that Donald Trump is safe. Violence has no place in our country. It’s not who we are as a nation.”
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Trump’s running mate in the presidential election, US senator JD Vance, said he spoke to Trump after the shooting and that the former president was in good spirits. The South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s top congressional allies, said he had spoken with the former president after the incident and that Trump was in “good spirits” and was “one of the strongest people I’ve ever known”.
Ed Pilkington
From the moment the secret service engaged the suspect, the apprehension also went like clockwork. As he was being fired upon, the suspect dropped the rifle and fled through the bushes, jumping into a black Nissan that he had presumably left strategically located for a fast getaway. Also remarkably in the circumstances, a passerby saw him flee and had the wits to take a photograph of the vehicle including its license plate.
Such is the power of surveillance technology in Florida that within minutes the number plate was being run through the state’s license plate readers. The escaping suspect was quickly tracked to the I-95 highway and promptly detained at gunpoint.
As William Snyder, sheriff of neighboring Martin county where the arrest was made, noted, the suspect was unarmed and appeared “relatively calm, he was not displaying a lot of emotion”.
The exemplary way in which federal and local law enforcement worked together to prevent what could have been a catastrophic event, followed by the consummate apprehension of the suspect, will take a lot of heat out of the situation as the inevitable blame game gets under way. But that other initial narrative also glares out and will demand answers.
How, after Trump came so close to being shot in Pennsylvania, was it possible for him to be out playing golf in a setting that appears to have been impossible to secure? What is happening in a country with as painful a history of successful assassinations as America’s when it sees a former president targeted not once but twice in such short order?
A beady-eyed Secret Service agent spared the US a potentially unconscionable disaster. Is that security enough?
“The threat level is high,” said the Secret Service spokesperson. “We live in dangerous times.”
Analysis: ‘a story of two conflicting narratives’
Ed Pilkington
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the initial analysis suggested a story of two conflicting narratives.
The first narrative focused on how exposed Trump was, even after security had been ramped up after the Butler incident, and how easy it appeared to have been for a heavily armed individual to gain entrance to the golf course and hide there engulfed in the bushes.
As Bradshaw put it, had Trump been a sitting president at the time he would never have been allowed by the Secret Service to play golf in such an open environment. But “he is not the sitting president, and so we are limited to what the Secret Service deems possible”.
The second narrative is more positive. Unlike the attempted assassination on Trump in Butler county, in which the Secret Service has faced serious questions about its competence leading to the resignation of its then director, Kimberly Cheatle, Sunday’s incident appears to paint the agency in a much rosier light.
The suspected gunman was spotted by a Secret Service agent who was acting as forward guard, going ahead of Trump by a hole or two to stake out potential threats. Despite the thick greenery flanking the course, the agent caught sight of a rifle barrel peeking through and engaged the suspect, firing four to six rounds of ammunition.
“The Secret Service did exactly what they were supposed to do, and their agent did a fantastic job,” Bradshaw said.
CNN has also named the suspect, again using unnamed sources, as Ryan Wesley Routh.
Three law enforcement officials told The Associated Press the same name, and Fox news is also reporting the name, citing unnamed law enforcement sources.
Authorities have not publicly identified the suspect. The Guardian has not confirmed this independently.
Here is what that page now looks like:
Trump’s fundraising page has been changed to read in part, “I am Donald J. Trump. FEAR NOT! I am safe and well, and no one was hurt. Thank God! But, there are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us”.
Authorities said that the person alleged to have pointed the rifle at Trump while he was playing golf on Sunday was between 300 and 500 yards from the former president.
To give some idea of the distance: Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was named as person involved in the Trump assassination attempt on 13 July at Butler Park Showgrounds in Pennsylvania, was on a roof 164 yards (150 metres) away from where Trump was speaking.
Suspect named in US media reports
The man who authorities say is alleged to have pointed rifle with a scope into former President Donald Trump’s golf club and was arrested is named Ryan Wesley Routh, three law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.
Fox news is also reporting the name, citing unnamed law enforcement sources.
Authorities have not publicly identified the suspect. The Guardian has not confirmed this independently.
Here are photographs showing an AK-47 rifle, a backpack and a Go-Pro camera on a fence outside Trump International Golf Club, taken after what the FBI said appeared to be an assassination attempt of Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump:
Four US presidents have been wounded but survived assassination attempts, while in office or afterwards, including Donald Trump, who survived an assassination attempt on 13 July. A bullet grazed Trump’s ear.
Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981 outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington. Reagan was wounded when one of the bullets ricocheted off a limousine and struck him under the left armpit.
President Gerald Ford survived two attempts on his life in less than three weeks in 1975 without being hurt.
Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest in 1912 while campaigning for election in Milwaukee, but insisted on delivering his speech to supporters before being taken to a hospital.
Four US presidents were assassinated while in office: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy.
Robert F. Kennedy, a US presidential candidate was assassinated in 1968 by a gunman in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, was shot in 1972 and became paralysed from the waist down.
Here is video footage of the briefing from Palm Beach county sheriff Ric Bradshaw:
CNN reports that the suspect was first spotted by the FBI at 1.30pm. It is now just after six PM in West Palm Beach, where the incident occurred.
Former US president Barack Obama has not issued a statement on the incident, but has just reposted Kamala Harris’s response – here that is again:
I have been briefed on reports of gunshots fired near former President Trump and his property in Florida, and I am glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) September 15, 2024
