Authorities have no information so far to suggest that the suspect in the apparent assassination attempt was acting with anyone else, an FBI official said.
Jeffrey Veltri, special agent in charge of the FBI Miami Field Office, cautioned that the investigation is still underway and that authorities are working to confirm whether Routh acted alone.
Rowe said that protective measures are working after the latest apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump, nine weeks after the first attempt on his life at an outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Rowe said he spoke with the former president and that Trump is “aware that he has the highest levels of protection” from the agency. He also said agents did their jobs to the letter when they noticed a man poking a rifle through the bushes at Trump’s golf course on Sunday.
Rowe said the golf trip wasn’t on Trump’s schedule, so they put together a security plan.
“And that security plan worked out,” he said.
Authorities are pursuing and executing search warrants for cell phones, a vehicle and electronics of the suspect, an FBI official said.
Veltri said authorities are interviewing witnesses on the scene as well as family members and former colleagues of Ryan Routh.
Veltri says Routh has numerous felony charges for stolen goods between 1997 and 2010.
Routh was the subject of a closed investigation in 2019 when someone reported he was in possession of a firearm despite a prior felony conviction, but Veltri says the tipster would not confirm making the report.
Investigators have collected DNA that was sent to the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Virginia, Veltri said. Agents in the FBI’s Charlotte and Honolulu field offices are conducting interviews.
The FBI’s analysis of cell phone data showed Routh was around the golf course in West Palm Beach for about 12 hours before the Secret Service encountered him.
Anthony Cangelosi, a former Secret Service agent, said the events Sunday show that there’s an obvious need for more personnel assigned to protect former President Trump.
“They could have been utilized to secure the perimeter,” he said.
He said it’s understandable that former presidents like Trump do not have the same level of protection as a sitting president. But, he said, Trump also isn’t like former presidents Obama or Clinton for example. He’s both a former president and a current nominee hoping to return to the White House.
“He’s not your typical former president,” he said.
Cangelosi, who’s currently a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, questioned whether a request had been made by anyone in the Secret Service for more personnel and if so what happened to that request? And if no requests have been made for more personnel, why not?
Without the resources to secure the entire perimeter, Cangelosi said the Secret Service did the next best thing, which was to have agents going ahead of the president to scout the next locations. He commended the work they did to spot the muzzle of the gun and open fire, saying they were vigilant. But he said there’s always a chance that they could have missed the muzzle. Extra coverage could include roving uniformed personnel outside the perimeter, for example, he said. The goal is to create a presence that serves as a deterrence.
He said the Secret Service doesn’t have the extra personnel but they can be pulled from other agencies.
President Joe Biden on Monday again decried the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump and said America must work to stop the scourge of political violence.
“America has suffered too many times the tragedy of an assassin’s bullet,” Biden said at the start of an address to the National HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia. “It solves nothing. It just tears the country apart. We must do everything we can to prevent it and never give it any oxygen.”
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