Trump Assassination Attempt: Suspect on FBI Radar Since 2019, had No Line of Sight
The agents didn’t scope out the property or perimeter because Trump golfing “was an off the record movement.”
We learned a few things from the FBI and acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe regarding the second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
The FBI knew about Ryan Routh back in 2019.
Rowe said Routh never shot his gun and didn’t have Trump in his line of sight. He also confirmed the USSS is spread thin.
FBI
Special Agent in Charge Jeffrey B Veltri informed the media that the FBI received a tip about Routh in 2019 about being a felon in possession of a firearm.
“Following up on the tip, the alleged complainant was interviewed and … did not verify providing the initial information. The FBI passed that information to local law enforcement in Honolulu,” said Veltri.
Veltri didn’t expand on the case, though.
The FBI has started an extensive investigation:
“Our FBI agents then attempted to interview him, and he invoked his right to an attorney,” Veltri said.
Veltri said agents have obtained a video recording device, cellular devices, a vehicle, and other electronic devices located at previous known addresses while executing search warrants.
The FBI’s Honolulu and Charlotte field offices have initiated interviews of several family members and former colleagues of the suspect.
Veltri said the FBI’s Evidence Response Team is collecting and processing multiple evidentiary items, including an SKS rifle with a scope, the subject’s electronics, and ceramic tiles.
“We’re continuing to conduct analysis, and we’ll be compiling the subjects movements in the days and months leading up to September 15th, Veltri said.
Veltri said the suspect had an “active online presence” and the bureau is going through what he posted and any searches he conducted online.
Veltri said that the suspect had been charged and convicted in 2002 in North Carolina for possession of a weapon of mass destruction. Law enforcement checks also revealed that from 1997 to 2010 the suspect had “numerous felony charges for stolen good.”
Secret Service
Rowe confirmed that Routh did not shoot his gun and didn’t have Trump in his line of sight:
The suspect accused of trying to assassinate former President Trump as he was golfing in Florida didn’t fire any shots and didn’t have a line of sight on the former president, authorities said Monday.
A U.S. Secret Service agent was sweeping an area when they saw Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, armed with what he believed was a firearm and opened fire, acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said during a news conference.
“The subject, who did not have line of sight to the former president, fled the scene,” Rowe said. “He did not fire or get off any shots at our agents.”
NEW: "The subject, who did not have line of sight to the former president, fled the scene. He did not fire or get off any shots at our agent," Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. says on the apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/WzJ65tBBhL
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 16, 2024
Rowe also said agents didn’t scope out the perimeter of the golf course because Trump “wasn’t supposed to be there.”
USSS Ron Rowe: “This was an off the record movement. It wasn’t a site that was on his scheduled… It wasn’t a part of his schedule. So, there was no posting up of it because he wasn’t supposed to have gone there in the first place.”
🚨WOW! USSS Director said the area wasn't scoped out prior because "[Trump] wasn't supposed to be there"
USSS Ron Rowe: "This was an off the record movement. It wasn't a site that was on his scheduled… It wasn't a part of his schedule. So, there was no posting up of it because… pic.twitter.com/ACq2qWLGna
— Vince Tagliavia (@ReadyF4Any) September 16, 2024
Rowe praised the agents and local law enforcement while admitting the USSS is spread thin:
“The Secret Service operates under a paradox of zero failed missions, but also, that we have done more with less for decades,” he said. “We have immediate needs right now and we have great support.”
After the first attempt on Trump’s life in July during a Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally, Rowe ordered a shift, focusing on the Secret Service’s methodology.
He noted the agency needs more funding for new hires and additional training.
“You can’t just give me funding and say ‘Hey, we’re going to make sure that everybody gets overtime,’” said Rowe. “Because the men and women of the Secret Service right now, we are redlining them. And they are rising to this moment and they are meeting the challenges right now.”
He cited the past two months in which agents have helped secure the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington and West Palm Beach, Florida, and last week’s presidential debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Our folks are rising to this moment but it requires all of us to be able to have good conversations and make sure that we’re getting the Secret Service where it needs to be,” Rowe said.
"The protective methodologies of the Secret Service were effective yesterday": Acting Secret Service Dir. Ronald Rowe goes through the timeline of events that led to the apprehension of Ryan Wesley Routh: https://t.co/r6JdzgI5hp pic.twitter.com/vZdsopTHt5
— NewsNation (@NewsNation) September 16, 2024
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Comments
No attempted assassination you notice
The guy was holed up for 3 hours with a MACHINE GUN , police couldn’t get him out, 20 years ago and got pretty much nothing
Hes a CiA asset or FBI
These fbi are clowns or conspirators
Has anyone seen any explanation why he didn’t do any time for this earlier crime? Illegal possession of a prohibited weapon under the National Firearms Act is not a 5-year sentence as many other federal gun laws are but a 10-year maximum sentence. People generally get 3-5, minimally. Very weird he didn’t particularly considering the circumstance of that incident.
That answer and one to the question of just what exactly North Carolina considers to be a ‘weapon of mass destruction’. In 2002 a WMD in NC? Not for nothing but the neocons had us invading and conquering Iraq in ’03 over claims of WMD…
It’s not NC. It’s Federal. A full automatic weapon is considered a WMD which is why the sentence is 10yrs if a prohibited person has one.
I haven’t seen any reports mentioning whether he did time. But as far as I know he wasn’t convicted of an NFA violation. The “weapon of mass destruction” he had was apparently a bomb.
No, it wasn’t. He had a full automatic weapon which is classified as a WMD by Federal Law. Many make this mistake as WMD to most means bomb. Biological or chemical agents which could cause a mass casualty event are also classified as WMD’s.
Where did you see that? I saw press reports that it was a bomb, or its components. An explosive, a detonation cord, and a blasting cap.
I’m in NC. I went to local reporting in Greensboro, Durham and Raleigh for this
Because firearm laws are often not enforced when they should be or if someone is hit with one, say a felon in possession of a firearm, the sentence is reduced not enforced to the full extent.
The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough firearm laws on the books, it’s that judges ignore them far too often.
There was no line of fire here. The attempted assassin never fired a shot. The incident in Butler, Pennsylvania is a whole different scenario. If you try to equate the two, you diminish the real threat in Butler.
Figures you would be exponetially obtuse. But why?
Ridiculous. What are you even talking about?
This is so obtuse. There was no ‘line of fire’ because Trump hadn’t reached the hole where the shooter was set up….yet. As soon as Trump made it to the green of the preceding hole, he would have been a sitting a duck and would have been a sitting duck until he got to to the green of the following hole, maybe even further.
I think they are using “line of fire” to mean that where he was located had a clear “line of fire” to where Trump would have walked. An SKS isn’t exactly a sniper rifle so that 3-400yrd shot would not have been easy but it was doable.
The threat was as real as the threat in Butler, circumstance alone prevented the threat from manifesting as actual physical harm. “Oh, don’t mind the man with the gun in the tree line. He hasn’t had a line of sight on you., yet,” is hardly reassuring.
Yes there was. Do you not understand what that means? A Line Of Fire just indicates a clear shooting lane where a target can be engaged. He certainly had that.
I disagree. Three minutes might have made a difference.
What “MACHINE GUN” are you talking about?
You have no idea at all. There was no “MACHINE GUN”. Just a normal semi-automatic rifle. And not even a good one.
How do you know that?
They’re talking about the machine gun this dude was arrested for having back in 2002 or vicinity — the place where he picked up his felon status. NC formally charged him with having a WMD, but people who know more about NC than I do on the gun blogs tell me that’s how you interpret that.
News reports I’ve seen said it was a bomb, or its components — an explosive, a detonation cord, and a blasting cap.
In NC a WMD can be a full automatic machine gun. Either way, this guy should have been in jail for a felon in possession of a weapon. The problem is not the gun laws. The problem is judges who refuse to enforce them.
Actually it’s a federal law. A full auto whether machine gun, rifle or pistol is considered a WMD. The penalty is 10 yrs and up to $250,000 if the person is prohibited from possessing a firearm or the machine gun was not transferred legally. Yes, private people in the US can own a machine gun with a few rules to follow.
Local news reports here do not mention any destructive device or bomb involved in his previous convictions.
This one does
NY Post is not a local source. If I see actual reporting from NC on his record then I will stand corrected. Until then all I’ve been able to find down here says that the WMD was a full auto firearm.
The SKS wouldn’t be my first choice, but it’s a solid and reliable rifle. Scoped it’s capable of successfully engaging a human sized target out to 300-400 yds. Part of it’s popularity is due to it’s reliability. It’s not the most elegant or ergonomic rifle out there, but they’re robust good shooters.
https://greensboro.com/man-with-gun-barricades-self-inside-business/article_3006b4f9-9370-5b08-a54e-46c87faf6cbe.html
Reports are he was there 12 hrs not 3. Even if that that is so then how did he know to be there if the event was unscripted and unadvertised?
No, he was there for 12 hours.
So it’s trumps
fault, of course it is
How dare he go golfing, it’s not on the schedule.. but someone somehow told the assassin he’d be there
Hmmm , doesn’t seem to fit the story does it
Asshats
But just give us more money and everything will be ok
Perhaps the assassin made a lucky guess – “Trump likes to go golfing, what’s the nearest top-rated course?” So the question is why the SS detail didn’t think of that and send a small team to keep an eye on the place?
Calling Jim Jordon
He’ll get to the bottom of this in 2029 and write a very stern letter!!!
Ace
“‘At this level he is at right now, he’s not the sitting president. If he was, we would have this entire golf course surrounded. But because he’s not, security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible,’ Bradshaw explained.”
—
The man was almost assassinated just a few short weeks ago. Didn’t they think it would behoove them to bump up his security just a bit? Nah? Oh, okay…
Yes, there’s a certain element of “Maybe we should give this extra, extra attention – especially the perimeter issue – between now and the election” that should be going on.
Having said that, I think they did bump his security a bit. They evidently got more attentive and competent people on the detail now. Though there’s no indication of whether this agent could holster his weapon after shooting at the wannabe as*as*in. *ahem*
How many MILLIONS of tax dollars have been burned through in New York,Georgia, Virgina, DC, in th-e various attempts to turn Trump into a “felon”? And alll UNsuccessfully, into the bargain? Perhaps one or two percent of THAT stolen tax money could have been diverted for a slightly increased level of security for a former president now campaigning for office again?
Somehow the “values” standards seem to me just a slight bit warped. But maybe I am the WIERD one?
Agree
China_is_Ahoe
September 16, 2024 7:05 pm
TWO attempts on PDJT in 60 days!!! These ruthless mongooses in the media treat it as another day that ends with “Y”. I am beyond angry at this point. I am convinced now that they will continue to saturate the space with even more vitriol until they have reduced even more machinations of evil to a soap opera… more crazies… more projection… to deflect from the blowback of their “eventual” success.
A murderous Democrat _is_ just another day that ends with “Y” – but usually it’s lawbreakers shooting each other.
USSS ‘spread thin’ are they? They have a $3.3 Billion (with a ‘B’) budget for 2024.
Perhaps they wouldn’t be spread so thin if they weren’t flushing hundreds of millions of dollars down the DEI toilet every year.
Do your fu*king job.
My thoughts exactly
That chick running the advance in Butler failed a number of her classes and should never have been an agent but DEI was so important she made it in and advanced.
I wonder if the press and the Dim pols and the other morons egging this shit on have stopped to consider what might happen to them if they succeed.
Have they ever seen the movie ‘The Purge?’ What if a few hundred thousand loyalist Trump fans lost their collective minds?
Watch what you wish for proggie scum, watch what you wish for.
It’s too bad we never seem to be able to get to the bottom of things that EVERYONE not only deserves to know, but should know.
So many unprecedented things have occurred since 2020, and the truth is that we do not know the truth. Democracy dies in darkness. You cannot get more Orwellian than that!
goes further back than 2020…about 75 years ago.
Some of it may, but too many recent instances. It’s probably more accurate to say there was a difference nature courtesy of Obama.
Yep. Barky marks the line when the government was turned inside out and put to actual war against America. Since Barky, the dems have been about absolutely nothing but burning this nation to the ground.
If Hillary had gotten in, we would surely have been ashes by now.
As Michael Bane has said many times, if one chums for monsters one should not be surprised when monsters arrive. Individuals who compare Trump to Hitler or worse are chumming and it appears that they have gotten what they wanted.
I find it hard to understand how Trump can be seen as a threat to democracy given that Biden has attempted to go around the Supreme Court to achieve what he wants by executive actions and his VP and current candidate KH has said that if the legislature doesn’t pass the bills she wants in the first 100 days of her presidency, then she will use executive actions to get what she wants done. So much for democracy (not to mention she never won a primary election but rather was appointed by the powers that be.
KH is caught in a political purge orchestrated by someone.
This moron is the reincarnation of Janet Napolitano: “The system worked!!” … explaining about airplane passengers taking down the underwear bomber.
This Rowe character needs to be booted out and locked up for serious interrogation about what’s been going on over the time since he took over from the last inept traitor who ran the Secret Service.
And Mayorkas should be impeached tomorrow.
He also confirmed the USSS is spread thin.
——————————–
oblunder had more than enough, he can spare a dozen. So can pedo joe and kameleon.
Just take ten or twenty from each and it’ll all be good.
3 billion dollars buys a lot of training
It’s all
BS
USSS Ron Rowe: “This was an off the record movement. It wasn’t a site that was on his scheduled… It wasn’t a part of his schedule. So, there was no posting up of it because he wasn’t supposed to have gone there in the first place.”
Hey, Brainiac: Jimmy Buffet there figured it out, so you ain’t that smart.
If it was ‘off the record’, how did Routh know to be there?
Evidently, when Trump is home, he always goes golfing if there’s nothing else on his schedule. The question is whence came that information to him, or did he figure it out on his own.
(This goes back to the counter-terrorism briefs/training I’ve had to do for 30+ years now, among which one of the first elements is to not be so danged predictable.)
The news has been covering Trump’s frequent golf outings at least since he first became a political figure. I don’t golf, but if I intensely wanted to meet Trump but could not get an appointment, I’d hang around a nearby golf course. And I’d acquire a golf bag as cover, even though I had no reason to conceal a rifle within it.
And I think you owe Jimmy Buffett an apology for that comparison. 😉
Jimmy Buffet owed everyone an apology.
If Jimmy Buffet the performer had shoehorned his “burnout alcoholic hippie beachcomber” character into a separate persona, like “Austin Powers” or “Larry The Cable Guy,” I would have referenced that. But he hung his own name on it, so that’s the way the cookie crumbles
My post to an LI story earlier today:
“He’s been on the FBI’s radar for a year,” in 3, 2, 1…
The question is how long he’s been on their payroll?
10,000’s of thousands of people have been interviewed by the FBI and are “on their radar”. It is a meaningless term. It appears someone claimed to the FBI that Routh had a gun. The FBI interviewed the person and the claim wasn’t backed up by anything so there was nothing to do at that point. The FBI let the Hawaii office know but there was no proof of any crime being committed in that instance.
He had been prosecuted (and convicted) for having an illegal machine gun in NC. So, even if not on the FBI’s radar, he probably should have been on the ATF’s.
He was prosecuted for that years ago. Is everyone that has been arrested forever on the law enforcement radar? I’m sure he was in the NICS database as a prohibited person from ever buying a firearm again but I doubt that SKS came from a licensed dealer. If they can recover the serial number on that firearm Routh filed off someone is going to have a very bad day.
So this guy who had a huge criminal past was lovingly interviewed by the New York Times and Newsweek without them doing even the most basic search to find out how insane he is ? Why ? Because violence in the name of their preferred opinions is acceptable to liberals. So they promoted a lunatic and he clearly wanted more attention.
didn’t have Trump in his line of sight
This is sort of a BS talking point. He didn’t have him in line of sight, but he was going to when Trump got to the 16th tee.
But it might be a defensive reflex intended to say “He was never in any real danger.”
Again, I will say the USSS did much better with this incident. But Trump really needs to hire at least a drone nerd who can run some surveillance out to a reasonable perimeter.
An SKS? with an obliterated serial number (saw that in another story)? Hmm. I’d be interested in seeing a clear, closeup picture of this rifle.
Granted, it’s so unlikely it’s silly to even wonder, but I had an SKS with a scope stolen during a burglary in 2016. If the serial number was obliterated, they’d never be able to make that link, so I’d like to see a picture just for curiosity sake.
Of course, there could have been big changes made to the rifle between 2016 and now, so even if it is mine, I may not be able to identify it.
Anyway, I just thought that was interesting.
BTW: The police didn’t seem to be at all interested in investigating the burglary at my house even though I had over a dozen guns stolen including that SKS, a couple of ARs and several handguns (If anyone tries to assassinate Trump with a WWII Springfield M1 Garand, or a civil war era Ballard Drop Block in .50 caliber, I’ll get really suspicious).
Of course, I can’t say I blame them…even if they tracked down the thieves, the odds are they would have just gotten a slap on the wrist anyway…why expend resources investigating crimes that won’t be punished? They basically just filled out a report and gave me the report number to file with my insurance company.
Nothing that was stolen could be turned into a machine gun, could it? No, wait, that incident was prior to your robbery.
I know several people have confirmed it was a sporterized SKS (that is, with an aftermarket stock and the adaptation to fit AK magazines). I wonder if he had ever shot that weapon before.
This guy was not simply some guy who went off his nut. He has been a problem person for a long time and simply upped his ambition.
I do find it interesting he didn’t fire back at the USSS agent. He really wouldn’t have been an asset to the Ukrainian forces, it seems. “That guy really hates these bushes!”
Any semi auto can be modified to full auto so yes, several of the firearms listed could certainly be. I though when I saw the picture that it was not an AK but an SKS. Been on several gun sites and everyone agrees that was what it was.
BTW: NEVER MODIFY A FIREARM INTO FULL AUTO. Even if you just want to try it out on your own property you just committed a Federal Crime.
As Diver said, any semi-auto can be modified to fire in full auto if one knows what one is doing.
An SKS is actually especially easy to sort of make into a full auto…you’re actually making it slam fire, which is a malfunction and could cause the gun to rapidly disassemble itself if it fires out of battery, but it would seem to operate like a machine gun right up until it came apart on you.
“I know several people have confirmed it was a sporterized SKS (that is, with an aftermarket stock and the adaptation to fit AK magazines)”
Mine had an aftermarket stock (I still have the original…I’d kept it in case I’d ever wanted to return it to original configuration). It wasn’t modified to accept AK mags but it was set up for removable “duckbill” mags, which could be easily confused for AK mags. Even more suspicious by the minute.
Hey, Secret Service…send me a picture and I’ll let you know if it was mine.
There really is no “adaptation” necessary — you just remove the fixed magazine (requires removal of receiver from stock, not at all challenging) and the SKS automatically accepts AK 30-rounders like it was made for them (which it was). During the AW ban, that was illegal to do. Now I’m pretty sure it isn’t.
Sorry…incorrect.
Removing the fixed magazine will make it capable of accepting “duckbill” mags. These are aftermarket magazines made specifically for that purpose. They look similar to, but are not straight AK mags.
Regarding legality…this gets a little complicated. I’m not going to go into it here, but search for “Section 922r compliance” using your favorite search engine and you can find out everything you ever wanted to know about ridiculous bureaucracy, red tape and silly unenforceable laws…and how to get around them.
I also need to state for the record…
Anyone remember the “Stay out da Bushes!” from back in 2004?