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Trump dodges another assassination attempt: Secret Service under fire for security failures
The second attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump in two months has laid bare the reality his security is still not being based on a threat matrix reflective of the dangers he faces, experts say.
After Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight shots at Trump and a rally crowd in Butler Township, Pa., on July 13, security professionals opined that the U.S. Secret Service treated him much differently than President Joe Biden, even though his threat profile was considerably higher than that of the sitting president.
As a result, many experts and observers
predicted another assassination attempt would be carried out in the coming weeks or months.
That came true around 1:30 p.m. Sept. 15 when the Secret Service spotted a rifle poking out of the bushes at the edge of Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla.
'They have to move to a threat-based protective model.'
An agent opened fire on what turned out to be a sniper’s nest on the public side of the fence near the sixth green, causing alleged would-be assassin Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, to flee the area, the FBI and Secret Service said.
Routh was arrested about 45 minutes later in nearby Martin County, Fla.
Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. said the gunman never had line of sight to former President Trump. The Secret Service discovered Routh trying to hide himself “in the wood line,” Rowe said.
“The protective methodologies of the Secret Service were effective yesterday,” Rowe said, citing a “layered approach” that had agents out ahead of Trump on the course. However, he said his department needs to shift away from being in a reactive mode into using a “readiness model.”
Rowe said “increased assets” ordered by President Joe Biden — including countersniper teams, counter-assault teams, and counter-surveillance agents — “were in place yesterday.”
At a news conference hours after the attempted assassination, however, the local sheriff confirmed Trump is not getting top-tier protection but only what the Secret Service deems “possible.”
“At this level that he is at right now, he’s not the sitting president,” Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said. “If he was, we would have had this entire golf course surrounded.”
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw addresses a news conference Sept. 16, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla.Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
“No, he’s a former President who was struck by an assassin’s bullet two months ago, and who Iran and others continue to plot against,” said U.S. Sen.
Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). “Two attempts in a little over 60 days. Horrendous and unacceptable.”
United States Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said the Secret Service still has not answered even basic questions about the Butler assassination case and now faces new scrutiny.
“Yesterday's would-be Trump assassin was on the golf course for 12 hours before Secret Service ID'd him,” Hawley wrote on
X. “The Butler shooter was on site long before he took his first shot. This is a dangerous pattern. Secret Service needs to tell us what's going on. And what they're doing to stop it.”
Martin County Sheriff William Snyder, whose deputies helped take Routh into custody at 2:14 p.m. Sept. 15, said Routh has no known ties to the county.
“I think we’re finding out he’s not from this area, which raises the bigger question, how does a guy from not here get all the way to Trump International, realize that the president, the former president of the United States is golfing and is able to get a rifle in that vicinity?”
The Secret Service has not been using the correct mindset when it comes to Trump’s security, one expert said.
“We’re in a situation where the threats against him are going to be higher than almost anyone, and they are still treating him like a third-rate protective responsibility,” said Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight, an educational organization dedicated to government accountability.
'The fact that the guy got away is troubling, that they weren't able to put effective fire on him.'
“They have to move to a threat-based protective model,” Leavitt said during an August Heritage Foundation forum on the Secret Service.
Jeffrey Veltri, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami Field Office, said the bureau received a tip in 2019 about Routh being a felon in possession of a firearm but was not able to substantiate the tip.
Routh was convicted in 2002 of possessing a fully automatic machine gun in Guilford County, N.C., court records show.
The 2019 tip was passed by the FBI to authorities in Hawaii, where Routh was living at the time, Veltri said.
Routh has a long criminal record in North Carolina. In addition to the gun felony, he has arrests for hit-and-run, obstructing police, multiple counts of possession of stolen goods, carrying a concealed weapon, driving on a revoked license, and multiple other motor-vehicle violations.
In his 2002 gun case, Routh fled from police after being pulled over on a traffic stop, then holed up in his roofing business keeping police at bay for three hours, according to a local newspaper account at the time.
According to North Carolina court records, Routh did not serve even one night in jail for his many convictions.
Trump's suspected would-be assassin in 2002 wielded a fully automatic machine gun in 3-hour standoff with police: Report
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Erik Prince, founder of the private security firm Blackwater, said it’s crucial that the state of Florida conduct its own comprehensive investigation.
“We have a federal system, and states have a lot more rights and a lot more power than they assert,” Prince said on "The Glenn Beck Program."
“And this is a perfect opportunity for the governor of Florida to say, ‘Enough. This nonsense stops on my watch.' And they’re going to do what they should do, a very thorough proctology, and especially dig into Routh’s electronics, anyone he’s in contact with over the last six days, six months, to figure out what the hell stimulated this guy to try this.”
Prince said he was “very troubled” that Routh was able to escape after being fired upon.
“There [are] two ballistic plates affixed to the fence — so obviously he was expecting counter fire — and his GoPro attached. Trophy hunting. He was going to be a hero of the left,” Prince said. “I am very troubled. I'm glad the Secret Service saw him first and engaged, but there [were] four rounds fired. The fact that the guy got away is troubling, that they weren't able to put effective fire on him.”
Former FBI Special Agent Steve Friend, a whistleblower who testified before the House Judiciary Committee in May 2023, said he’s troubled that the man in charge of the FBI’s West Palm Beach assassination case is a well-known Trump-hater.
Cellphone data uncovers would-be assassin's disturbing determination to attack Trump — until Secret Service opened fire
Ryan Wesley Routh's arrest shown on police bodycam.
Friend said Special Agent In Charge Veltri was previously deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Security Division, which he said has targeted whistleblowers for expulsion from the bureau.
“And from that post, he actually said that whistleblowers that they were looking to purge from the ranks were people who were military veterans — because he thought that they were disloyal — as well as people who attended regular religious worship ceremonies and opposed the coronavirus vaccine,” Friend said on "The Glenn Beck Program."
FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Director Paul Abbate, and former Executive Assistant Director Jen Moore told Veltri to clean his Facebook profile “of all the anti-Trump vitriol that he publicly put out there” before he could accept a promotion to head the FBI Miami office, Friend said.
Prince echoed those concerns.
“And to think that this [is] the Miami office of the FBI, the same office that raided Mar-a-Lago on a bogus documents case where the new special agent in charge, [a] whistleblower said that the FBI told him to delete his social media history because it was so virulently anti-Trump,” Prince said. “If we think that FBI office is going to do an honest job of investigating, I have severe doubts.”
Several officials said there needs to be an investigation of possible leaks inside the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and even the Trump campaign itself to determine how Routh knew 12 hours in advance Trump would be on the golf course.
Others asked how an active mercenary recruiting for soldiers to fight the war in Ukraine was not under FBI watch.
Jeff Clark, assistant attorney general under President Trump, blamed the Biden-Harris administration for the ongoing risk to the former president.
“Protocol is just a fancy French word for rules of thumb,” Clark wrote on X. “The thing about rules of thumb is that they can be changed as circumstances demand. And they should certainly have changed after the first assassination attempt on Trump in Butler."
“Joe Biden and Kamala could easily give the Secret Service surge resources and the flexibility to harden the protocol,” Clark said. “So it’s their fault President Trump isn’t being adequately protected.”
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