Palm Beach County sheriff says suspected gunman didn’t appear to have clear shot at Trump

The day after the possible attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said that the suspected gunman did not appear to have a clear shot of the former president on the golf course.

But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t in danger. And as a suspect was charged in connection with the incident, there were increasing calls for beefing up the former president’s Secret Service security.

“From where [the gunman] was at, he would have had to wait for the president to get up to that hole and then turn and face going toward the area he was at,” Bradshaw said on “Fox & Friends” Monday. “It doesn’t appear to me, knowing what I know about the terrain there and where we are looking at, that he had a clear shot from there to where the president was before he would make the turn to come that way.”

The suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, was charged Monday in connection with the Sunday incident, appearing in federal court in West Palm Beach. He was charged in a criminal complaint with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number, court records show.

While the FBI said Sunday that the agency was investigating the event as an apparent assassination attempt, the initial criminal complaint against Routh was limited to the gun charges and did not include a specific charge of attempted assassination or any violent offense.

A Secret Service agent spotted the gunman with a rifle sticking through the fence of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach and fired at the man before he fled the scene, according to Bradshaw. Trump was playing golf 300 to 500 yards away, he said, and was not harmed.

Bradshaw told reporters Sunday that law enforcement located an “AK-47 style rifle” with a scope, two backpacks containing ceramic tiles and a GoPro camera. Bradshaw said Routh might have planned to use the ceramic tile as “body armor.”

Routh may have been lying in wait for Trump for more than 11 hours “in the vicinity of the area of the tree line,” FBI Special Agent Mark Thomas wrote in the complaint .

The Sunday incident was “not like what happened in Butler,” Bradshaw said, referencing the first attempt on Trump’s life at a July campaign rally in Pennsylvania , when a gunman fired multiple rounds, shooting Trump in the ear, killing one person and injuring two others.

“He did not get off any rounds, and that was because the Secret Service agent acted quickly,” Bradshaw said, adding that the Secret Service had as many resources as “possible” at the golf course.

The FBI is at the scene of the incident and law enforcement is working to gather details about Routh, he said.

“We're trying to figure out if he had a place locally that he was staying," Bradshaw said. “It appears that the last place of his residence was in Hawaii. We are checking to see what his flight schedules were and if he had any travel plans to get here.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Monday that “the entire Justice Department — including the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, and the National Security Division — is coordinating closely with our law enforcement partners on the ground” and that the department will “work tirelessly to ensure accountability” and “bring every available resource to bear in this investigation.”

United States Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe was at the golf club Monday morning to tour the crime scene, and will meet with the former president at Mar-a-Lago Monday afternoon.

Outside the White House Monday morning, President Joe Biden urged the need for more support for the Secret Service.

“One thing I want to make clear is: The Service needs more help. And I think Congress should respond to their need,” Biden said.

Speaker Mike Johnson, during a “Fox & Friends” interview on Monday, said the House will demand that Trump “have every asset available” as part of his security detail.

Task force chair Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and ranking member Jason Crow (D-Colo.) on Monday questioned how the alleged gunman knew Trump would be on the golf course and called for more resources to be allocated to the Secret Service.

“The Secret Service told us very clearly last week that they are red-lined,” Crow said on Fox. “They are working overtime overtime — double overtime. These folks are burning out. They need new resources. We need to get them help so they can do the job that the American people expect them to do.”

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) said on CNN on Monday that the task force investigating the first assassination attempt of Trump will meet with Rowe when members return to Washington.

The bipartisan group has not yet received the go-ahead on probing the second possible attempt on Trump’s life, but Houlahan said that she expects the task force to include the incident at Trump’s golf property this past weekend.

“It's simply unacceptable that anybody who's under their protection of the Secret Service is in danger,” Houlahan said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pledged Monday that state officials will perform their own investigation into Sunday’s incident, claiming that “there’s a need to make sure that the truth about all of this comes out in a way that’s credible.”

The Republican governor and Trump ally alleged there were “multiple” violations of state law amid the possible attempt, and that the Biden administration has its own “prerogative” in probing the event. DeSantis, who previously sought the GOP presidential nomination over Trump, said Monday morning that he had yet to speak with the former president about the incident.

“I look to the federal government, with all due respect to them — those same agencies that are prosecuting Trump in that jurisdiction are now going to be investigating this?” DeSantis said during an event in Orlando. “I just think that may not be the best thing for this country.”

In a post on Truth Social late Sunday night, Trump thanked the Secret Service, Bradshaw and all law enforcement officers for “keeping me, as the 45th President of the United States, and the Republican Nominee in the upcoming Presidential Election, SAFE.”

Meridith McGraw, Kimberly Leonard, Josh Gerstein and Andrew Atterbury contributed to this report.