Sheriff’s office shares footage of moment suspect is arrested
A video posted to Facebook on Monday shows the arrest of the man suspected in the apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump.
The body camera footage shared by the Martin county sheriffâs office shows Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, walking backward with his hands over his head on the side of a road before being handcuffed and led away by law enforcement.
Key events
Donald Trump is returning to X Spaces this evening for a broadcast on the social media platformâs live audio feature:
About a month ago, he held a nearly three-hour-long talk on Spaces with Xâs chairman, Elon Musk, which was surprisingly light on news:
Before news of a potential second assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump broke, the New York Times reported on Sunday that John Roberts, the conservative chief justice of the supreme court, to encourage his colleagues to rule in favor of the former president on the question of his immunity that came before them earlier this year. Hereâs more on that, from the Guardianâs Anna Betts:
John Roberts Jr used his position as the US supreme courtâs chief justice to urge his colleagues to rule quickly â and in favor â of Donald Trump ahead of the decision that granted him and other presidents immunity for official acts, according to a New York Times investigation published on Sunday.
The new report provides details about what was happening behind the scenes in the countryâs highest court during the three recent supreme court decisions centering on â and generally favoring â the Republican former president.
Based on leaked memos, documentation of the proceedings and interviews with court insiders, the Times report suggests that Roberts â who was appointed to the supreme court during Republican George W Bushâs presidency â took an unusually active role in the three cases in question. And he wrote the majority opinions on all three.
In addition to the presidential immunity ruling, the decisions collectively barred states from removing any official â including Trump â from a federal ballot as well as declaring the government had overstepped with respect to obstruction of justice charges filed against participants of the 6 January 2021 attack that the former presidentâs supporters aimed at Congress.
The Times reported that last February, Roberts sent a memo to his fellow supreme court justices regarding the criminal charges against Trump for attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden.
Merrick Garland, the attorney general, issued a statement where he promised to âwork tirelesslyâ and use âevery available resourceâ in the investigation into the apparent attempted assassination on Donald Trump.
âWe are grateful the former president is safe,â Garlandâs statement reads.
The entire justice department â including the FBI, the US attorneyâs office for the southern district of Florida, and the national security division â is coordinating closely with our law enforcement partners on the ground.
âWe will work tirelessly to ensure accountability, and we will bring every available resource to bear in this investigation,â he added.
Hereâs more from Joe Bidenâs address to the National HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia, during which he decried the apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump and urged Americans to work together to stop the scourge of political violence.
The Secret Serviceâs acting director, Ronald Rowe Jr, was in Florida âassessing what happened and determining whether any further adjustments need to be made to ensureâ Trumpâs safety, AP quoted Biden as saying. He added:
America has suffered too many times the tragedy of an assassinâs bullet. It solves nothing. It just tears the country apart. We must do everything we can to prevent it and never give it any oxygen.
Biden: ‘There is no place for political violence in America’
Joe Biden has been speaking at a conference of historically Black colleges and universities in Philadelphia, during which he addressed the apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
Biden commended the Secret Service for their âexpert handling of the situationâ, per pool report. He said:
Let me just say there is no â and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, and those of you who know me know this â in America, there is no place for political violence.
Sheriff’s office shares footage of moment suspect is arrested
A video posted to Facebook on Monday shows the arrest of the man suspected in the apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump.
The body camera footage shared by the Martin county sheriffâs office shows Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, walking backward with his hands over his head on the side of a road before being handcuffed and led away by law enforcement.
The White House described a now-deleted post by Elon Musk on X as âirresponsibleâ after the tech mogul questioned why Donald Trump has faced two apparent assassination attempts while Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have not encountered any.
In a Sunday night post, Musk wrote: âAnd no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.â He later the deleted the post after intense backlash, claiming his comments were intended as a joke.
In a statement, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said:
As President Biden and Vice President Harris said after yesterdayâs disturbing news, âthere is no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country,â and âwe all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence.â
âViolence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible,â the statement added.
In a new post on X, Donald Trump has reiterated his argument that rhetoric from Democrats is to blame for the potential assassination attempt against him yesterday.
The former president said: âBecause of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!â He repeated his campaign promise to enact hardline immigration policies â even though there is no sign that the man suspected of planning to open fire at the golf club where Trump was playing is from another country.
The day so far
Federal prosecutors have brought gun charges against Ryan Wesley Routh, who was arrested yesterday in Florida after what investigators believe may have been an assassination attempt against Donald Trump. In charging documents, an FBI special agent said that Routhâs cellphone spent nearly 12 hours in the vicinity of the tree line at Trumpâs golf course in West Palm Beach, and that he had previously been convicted in North Carolina on a felony charge of possessing âa weapon of mass death and destructionâ. Trump sought to use the incident, in which he was not injured, to his advantage, telling Fox News that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were to blame because theyâve described him as a threat to democracy for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Hereâs what else has happened today so far:
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Biden spoke briefly to reporters about the incident, saying the Secret Service should be given more resources, perhaps personnel.
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Harris said she was âdeeply disturbed by the possible assassination attemptâ targeting Trump.
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In addition to blaming Democrats, Trump is fundraising off the potential assassination attempt.
FBI special agent Mark A Thomas also noted that the license plate on the car Ryan Wesley Routh was driving when arrested did not match the vehicle.
Routh was driving a Nissan SUV, but Thomas writes in the criminal complaint that the plate matched a 2012 white Ford truck that had been reported as stolen.
Suspect in potential Trump assassination attempt spent nearly 12 hours in tree line of golf club, FBI says
In the complaint, FBI special agent Mark A Thomas wrote that he learned from Ryan Wesley Routhâs mobile phone service provider that his device was around the tree line of Donald Trumpâs golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, for nearly 12 hours.
A phone registered to Routh, who is facing federal gun charges over yesterdayâs incident that the FBI has said may have been an assassination attempt, âwas located in the vicinity of the area along the tree line ⦠1.59am until approximate 1.31pm on September 15, 2024â.
Suspect in potential Trump assassination attempt traced to golf club by cellphone data
Ryan Wesley Routh, who was arrested in Florida yesterday after a Secret Service agent saw a gun pointed at a golf course where Donald Trump was playing, was traced to the scene by cellphone data and driving with a license plate traced to a stolen car when he was apprehended, an FBI agent wrote in a criminal complaint.
Routh faces federal charges of being a felon in possession of a gun, and possessing a firearm with a defaced serial number.
In the complaint, FBI special agent Mark A Thomas also said that Routh had been convicted in 2002 in North Carolina of possessing âa weapon of mass death and destructionâ, a felony.
Such weapons include fully automatic rifles, sawed-off shotguns, bombs, grenades and mines, according to the stateâs laws.
This post has been corrected to say that Routhâs license plate was linked to a stolen car, not that the car he was driving was stolen.
CNN spoke to William Snyder, the sheriff of Martin county, Florida, whose deputies yesterday arrested Ryan Wesley Routh after he allegedly pointed a gun at the golf course where Donald Trump was playing.
Snyder told the network that Routh was so calm when deputies pulled him over that they wondered if they had the right man:
It was perplexing. You know, somebody who actually at the time we werenât positive that we had the suspect. We had the vehicle. We thought we had him. But his facial affect was so flat. His demeanor was relaxed. I â I honestly thought it looked like somebody that just left the church picnic and was on his way home. And â and the interstate was crawling with law enforcement. We had, you know, the SWAT team had gotten out their rifles, helicopter, I-95 shut down, a bomb dog. Everything was there. And he was just calm as â as really as if he was going for dinner.
Over on Truth Social, his preferred social media platform these days, Donald Trump is fundraising off the apparent second attempt to assassinate him yesterday.
âFIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!!!!!â the former president wrote in a post, repeating the words he uttered after a gunman attempted to kill him at a rally in Pennsylvania two months ago. A link in the post directs readers to a website where he solicits campaign donations, which reads:
FEAR NOT!
I am safe and well, and no one was hurt. Thank God!
But, there are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us.
I will not stop fighting for you.
I will Never Surrender!
I will always love you for supporting me.
Through our UNITY we will Make America Great Again!
Man arrested in apparent Trump assassination attempt faces gun charges
Federal prosecutors have brought charges related to improperly possessing a gun against Ryan Wesley Routh, who was arrested yesterday in Florida after apparently trying to open fire on Donald Trump while he was golfing, the Associated Press reports.
During his first appearance in federal court, prosecutors announced charges against Routh related to possessing a firearm as a felon and possessing a firearm with a defaced serial number.
The hearing lasted about eight minutes, and the AP reports that Routh could face as much as 15 years in prison if convicted on the first charge, and up to five years in prison for the second.
Trump says Biden and Harris’s ‘rhetoric is causing me to be shot at’
Donald Trump has sought to blame Kamala Harris and Joe Biden for the second apparent assassination attempt targeting him, telling Fox News in an interview this morning that the Democrats have instigated violence by saying he was a threat to American democracy.
The comments came as the former president continues to insist, without evidence, that he won the 2020 election, and after a bipartisan congressional investigation found he engaged in a âmulti-part conspiracyâ to subvert the will of voters that culminated in his supportersâ attacking the Capitol on 6 January 2021.
Both Biden and Harris made warnings of Trumpâs anti-democratic leanings a key part of their pitch to voters, but in the interview, the former president linked those to his attempted assassination in Pennsylvania in July, and to the apparent second attempt yesterday in Florida.
âTheir rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country â both from the inside and out,â Trump said. Speaking of Ryan Wesley Routh, the man accused of attempting the assassination, he added: âHe believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it.â
Referring to the president and vice-president, Trump said: âIt is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.â
Trump is awaiting trial in federal court on charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith over his attempt to block Biden from taking power in the weeks after the 2020 election:
The sheriffâs department who arrested Ryan Wesley Routh for allegedly planning to assassinate Donald Trump has released a photo of him from when he was taken into custody: