(NewsNation) — The suspect in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at his West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course Sunday is set to be charged Monday morning.
The FBI is investigating the incident as an assassination attempt, the second one faced by the former president in recent months.
Trump was on the golf course when a Secret Service agent spotted the barrel of a rifle sticking through the fence and fired shots at the suspect, who fled. He was captured on Interstate 95 and taken into custody.
Identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, the suspect had a criminal record in North Carolina, where he lived before moving to Hawaii. His record went back to 1997, including a charge in 2002 for possessing a weapon of mass destruction.
Routh was registered as an unaffiliated voter in North Carolina and voted in the Democratic primary. It appears he voted for Trump in 2016 but was disappointed in his administration. Routh also seemed to believe in COVID-19 conspiracies and to have attempted to recruit volunteers to go serve in Ukraine.
The shooting attempt was the second assassination attempt on Trump. In July, a shooter opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, narrowly missing the former president. One attendee was killed in the shooting and two others were injured.
The Secret Service has been under pressure to explain how the July shooting was allowed to happen, with the agency facing multiple investigations. Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned in the wake of the shooting.
Authorities have stressed that this attempt was not the same, with agents spotting the threat and engaging before any shots could be fired by the suspect. However, it is likely the agency will face more questions as to how another gunman got so close to a presidential candidate.
