[Ryan Wesley] Routh faced criminal charges in North Carolina for two separate incidents, in April and December 2002. According to the Washington Post, Routh pleaded guilty to the first charge in April, although no further details about the case are public. In December of that year, Routh was charged with “carrying a concealed weapon and possession of a weapon of mass destruction” after he barricaded himself inside a local business called United Roofing with a “fully automatic machine gun,” the Greensboro News and Record reported in 2002. After Sunday’s incident, Tracy Fulk, the charging officer involved in the December 2002 case, told Wired magazine: “I figured he was either dead or in prison by now…I had no clue that he had moved on and was continuing his escapades.”
— Siladitya Ray in Trump Assassination Attempt: Everything We Know About The Arrested Suspect
Did I hear correctly the Secret Service fired several times at the attempted shooter and MISSED, allowing him to flee?
You don’t get to be a Secret Service agent if you’re not an excellent shot. They want to see Trump get killed… 🙁
Geoff PR,
I don’t believe that there is enough widely available public information to gauge the efforts of the Secret Service. At least I have not seen enough information to do so.
Here are some possibilities regarding the Secret Service agent who shot at the alleged assassin:
1) Agent fired handgun while running toward the assassin’s location.
2) Agent fired a rifle at the assassin who was running.
3) Assassin realized he was made and ducked into the bushes–and agent firing rifle guessed at assassin’s location.
In all three examples above, even an outstanding marksman could easily miss on all four shots.
I think the much bigger problem is how the alleged assassin knew when and where to be. It stands to reason that the assassin could not have been camped out next to the golf course for weeks, days, or even hours hoping that The Donald would wander by. So how did he know WHEN to be there? Similarly, it stands to reason that the assassin could not have strolled around the golf course (or just outside the chain-link fence and inside the hedge row) scouting out an excellent location to set up.
The real problem, as I see it, is how The Donald’s protective detail left a perfect spot available for an assassin in Butler, Pennsylvania and how this idiot knew when and where to be. That sounds like a higher level of the Secret Service is actively facilitating an assassination rather than incompetent people on the ground are failing to provide security.
Geoff PR,
In my first response to your comment, I mentioned that the real problem, as I see it, is how two alleged would-be assassins had such excellent access to prime locations and times. My gut reaction is that someone higher up in the Secret Service is actively trying to enable would-be assassins to succeed.
In that vein someone posted a video about one week after the Butler, Pennsylvania attempt which showed how someone who lives in the alleged assassin’s home went into a cafe in Washington, D.C. at the same time that one or more FBI and/or SS employees went into that same cafe. The video presenter was virtually certain that one or more employees of the FBI and/or SS met with the would-be assassin to promote success. The video seemed credible/believable but who knows if we can actually trust some random video presentation, no matter how polished it is?
At any rate, what troubles me is how there have been two incidents now where would-be assassins had unfettered access to prime locations–and even more disturbing is how the would-be assassin in this most recent event knew WHEN to be there.
We have heard the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” We can claim to dismiss the first event as some sort of gross Secret Service oversight and only the would-be assassin is culpable. Now that there have been two events, we should not give the Secret Service a pass: instead we should conclude that some middle or high level SS employee is actively facilitating otherwise successful assassination attempts. Or at the very least, we should conclude that the Secret Service is utterly incompetent and therefore incapable of providing adequate protection.
If I were The Donald, I would employ at least two, if not four, trustworthy private security personnel to be active lookouts/scouts whenever he is exposed outside for any length of time. These two to four private security personnel would supplement and augment his Secret Service and police security personnel. And their primary (perhaps ONLY) responsibility would be visual assessment of locations prior to and during outdoor exposure. Their responsibility would NOT be engaging hostile actors. Their responsibility would be SEEING hostile actors and immediately directing Secret Service and/or police to immediately act upon a threat.
Either way, it stinks… 🙁
Realistically prohibited person or not if he has the desire and money to get a gun he absolutely can law be damned.
Do we know for sure that federal law deems him a person who cannot lawfully purchase or possess firearms?
For what he was initially arrested for seems so but see what shakes loose.