Attempted assassin Ryan Wesley Routh tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump while he was golfing, but was foiled for a second time due to a lack of Secret Service security around the Trump International Golf Course.
Acting Director Ronald Lowe told reporters in West Palm Beach yesterday that the agency did its job, but he also acknowledged that the agency did not clean up around the course because President Trump was not planning to play golf.
The blunder came two months after authorities botched security around a Trump campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, where attempted assassin Thomas Matthews Crooks shot President Trump in the ear and killed firefighter Corey Comperatore.
400 yards away
As The New American reported yesterday, the criminal complaint against Rausch, written by an FBI agent, said that the convicted man had been lying in wait at the golf course for 12 hours, beginning at about 2 a.m. Sunday morning, and had an SKS-style rifle and a GoPro camera, presumably to record the assassination.
Routh, 58, was playing with a campaign donor and was several hundred yards ahead of Trump, who was between the fifth and sixth holes.
According to the complaint, a Secret Service agent saw what appeared to be a “rifle protruding from between the trees.” The agent opened fire, and Routh fled in a Nissan SUV. Martin County sheriff's deputies arrested him on Interstate 95 North.
Given that Crooks was within about 150 yards of Trump, putting him in an easy spot, one might reasonably ask why the Secret Service didn't surround the golf course. The answer is, Trump was playing golf.
Or so it seems.
Lowe said the outing had not been planned and the police department did not guard the perimeter.
“Shortly after the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald J. Trump, the Secret Service moved to add additional assets to the already heightened security presence for the former president,” Rowe said.
President Biden ordered the agency to provide “the highest level of protection” to President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, and the agency has “moved to maintain the increased assets and level of protection requested.”
Those resources were “in place” by about 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, Rowe added, but Trump's campaign trip was an “unofficial event.”
Investigators, who are “supporting the police's front line of defence-in-depth approach”, encountered Routh “attempting to hide in woodland”.
Rowe went on to say that Routh was “on the public side of the fence near the sixth green.”
As former President Trump walked across the course down the fifth fairway and out of view of the sixth green, agents conducting visual surveillance of the area saw the suspect possess what appeared to be a rifle and immediately fired their weapons.
Rowe said Routh had no clear intention to attack the former president.
Lowe described the “defensive approach as effective” and said the “enhanced assets” Biden ordered were “in place,” including counter-sniper teams and counter-surveillance.
However, the reporter asked, “Was the golf course thoroughly searched before the former president arrived?”
Lowe responded:
This was an unofficial operation, meaning it was not on the former president's official schedule. I return to the Secret Service's layered approach, elements and methodology.
You see, there was a forward group whose role was to sweep ahead of the president, and they identified an individual in the woods, and they went about their business, moving quickly to go forward and sweep while the president was a few hundred yards behind and out of sight of the shooter.
Rowe said he didn't know if Routh knew Trump was on the golf course.
Routh must have known something, because he was ready to shoot Trump as he approached, was on, or left the sixth green, and he also waited in ambush for Trump for 12 hours.
If Routh knew nothing about Trump's schedule, he simply assumed that Trump would be playing golf that day.
“How many times did agents circulate and scout the golf course during the 12 hours this man was holed up in the shrubbery?” the reporter asked.
Lowe responded:
So this was an unofficial workout, it wasn't on his schedule, it wasn't part of his schedule, so there was no posting because he was never supposed to be there in the first place.
At a press conference after the shooting, West Palm Beach Sheriff Rick Bradshaw said the perimeter was not secured because Donald Trump was not the sitting president.
Butler, Pennsylvania failure
Whatever the reason, admitting that police failed to secure the perimeter would be damaging to their reputation on Capitol Hill.
A number of missteps were revealed in the July 13 assassination attempt on President Trump, including an encounter with Crooks hours before he shot Trump and the failure to station investigators on the steep slope of the roof from which Crooks fired.
Video footage showed Crooks sprinting across the rooftop preparing to shoot Trump, and local police spotted him on the roof 30 minutes before the shots were fired.
However, authorities left security in the surrounding area to local police.
The policing failures led to the resignation of then-Chief Kimberly Cheatle, whose top priority for the department was to ensure that women made up 30% of the department's employment by 2030.
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said the American people would be “shocked, astonished and appalled” to learn the information lawmakers had received about the near-assassination.
