The US Secret Service said the suspect in an apparent assassination attempt did not have a line of sight on former president Donald Trump, and did not fire his weapon.
The FBI said Mr Trump was the target of “what appears to be an attempted assassination” at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday, just nine weeks after the Republican presidential nominee survived another attempt on his life.
US Secret Service agents opened fire on Sunday after seeing a person with a firearm near Mr Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club in Florida while he was golfing. No injuries were reported. Officials say the person fled in an SUV and was later apprehended by local police.
The suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, was charged on Monday with federal gun crimes. Additional and more serious charges are possible as the investigation continues and prosecutors seek an indictment from a grand jury.
Acting director Ronald Rowe Jr of the US Secret Service says Routh, 58, “did not have a line of sight to the former president” and did not fire at Secret Service agents before he fled the scene.
Mr Rowe said that protective measures are working.
He said he spoke to the former president and that Mr Trump is “aware that he has the highest levels of protection” from the agency. He also said agents did their jobs to the letter when they noticed a man poking a rifle through the bushes at Mr Trump’s golf course on Sunday.
Mr Rowe said the golf trip was not on Mr Trump’s schedule, so they put together a security plan.
“And that security plan worked out,” he said.
Authorities are pursuing and executing search warrants for mobile phones, a vehicle and electronics of Routh, an FBI official said.
Jeffrey Veltri, special agent in charge of the FBI Miami Field Office, said authorities are interviewing witnesses on the scene as well as family members and former colleagues of Routh.
Mr Veltri says Routh has numerous felony charges for stolen goods between 1997 and 2010.
Routh was the subject of a closed investigation in 2019 when someone reported he was in possession of a firearm despite a prior felony conviction, but Mr Veltri said the tipster would not confirm making the report.
Authorities have no information so far to suggest that Routh was acting with anyone else, Mr Veltri said.
He cautioned that the investigation is still under way and that authorities are working to confirm whether Routh acted alone.
The owner of X, formerly Twitter, Elon Musk has deleted a post on his social media platform in which he said “no one is even trying to assassinate” President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the wake of the apparent assassination attempt on Mr Trump.
Mr Musk, who has nearly 200 million followers on the site he bought for 44 billion dollars (£33 billion) in 2022, has not only increasingly embraced conservative ideologies in recent years but also endorsed Mr Trump for president.
The post was in response to another user, DogeDesigner, one of the 700 accounts that Mr Musk follows. He took it down early on Monday, hours after posting it amid widespread criticism.
