Law&Crime Sidebar - 8 Shocking Details of Donald Trump’s Would-Be Assassin's Arrest at Golf Club

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wonderry Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. In the bushes where this guy was, is a 8K-47-style rifle with a scope, two backpacks which were hung on the fence that had ceramic tile in them, and a GoPro, which he was going to take pictures of. Another potential assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, this time on a Sunday afternoon as he golfed near Mara Lago. We've got the latest on the law enforcement response, the suspect, and the reaction worldwide with former FBI and CIA agent Tracy Walder. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Well, after the shocking attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, just what, too much? months ago, we now may have another attempt on his life. This again, after you have a bipartisan

Starting point is 00:01:02 congressional task force requesting a briefing, President Biden saying the Secret Service needs more resources, and now we're going to try to make sense of this latest. So, authorities say the former president was playing a round of golf at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach on Sunday afternoon, when suddenly shots rang out. And those shots were reportedly from a secret service agent who had spotted the muzzle of an AK-47 sticking out of the bushes, about 300 to 500 yards away. Palm Beach County Sheriff Rick Bradshaw says the shooter was only about a few hundred yards away, maybe 300 to 500 yards away from the current Republican candidate for president. Donald Trump was rushed to his property at Mara Lago.

Starting point is 00:01:45 The secret service agent that was on the course did a fantastic job. What they do is they have an agent that jumps one hole ahead of time to where the president was at. And he was able to spot this rifle barrel, stick it out of the fence, and immediately engage that individual, at which time the individual took home. Now, fortunately, Donald Trump was unharmed. It's unclear if any shots were actually fired by the suspect. But agents did find an AK-47 with a scope, two backpacks, a GoPro camera in the bushes. They were actually hanging up on the fence that surrounds the golf course. Now, a witness was able to give deputies information about the car that the suspect

Starting point is 00:02:27 jumped into, and he was pulled over just over the county line in neighboring Martin County. In fact, newly released body cam video shows the suspect surrendering to police with his shirt pulled up, hands in the air, presumably to prove he's unarmed. Deputies stopped him on Interstate 95. This was about 45 minutes after he allegedly fled the scene. Now, this suspect has been identified as 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, and he made his first court appearance in federal court in West Palm Beach. He's been charged through an FBI criminal complaint with gun crimes. We're going to get to that in a minute.

Starting point is 00:03:04 He has not entered a plea, but observers in the courtroom say that Ralph appeared calm, collected. The judge explained that he's entitled to a federal public defender because apparently he has no funds, no savings, no assets. He's going to be array in September 30th. And by the way, we put Ralph's full name into the search bar on Truth Finder, found a huge list of various citations and criminal charges that he's dealt with over the years. Most are connected to his time in North Carolina, dating all the way back to the mid-1980s. We double-checked with the Guilford County court system in North Carolina, and Ralph has about 86 cases in their system. The charges include everything from reckless driving in 1998 to possession of a controlled substance to possessing stolen goods.

Starting point is 00:03:46 We also found information about a conviction in 2002 on a charge of having a weapon of mass destruction. Now we weren't able to confirm exactly what that might have been, but a newspaper article from 2002 says that the charge was in reference to a fully automatic machine gun that Ralph allegedly had during a standoff with police. And back to Truth Finder for a second. It puts all this information together in one place. It's one of the largest public record search services in the United States. We use it all the time.

Starting point is 00:04:13 You can even use it to pull up registered sex offenders in your area, which when you think about it is super helpful for peace of mind and by the way with a paid subscription service you can get access to unlimited reports about almost anyone right now if you're interested you can get 50% off of your first month of confidential background reports you just got to go to truthfinder.com slash lc sidebar okay so now that actually leads me into the latest because ralph has been hit with federal gun charges possession of a firearm by a convicted felon which i believe can carry up to 15 years in prison and possession of a firearm arm with an obliterated serial number which can carry up to five years so with that what do we know

Starting point is 00:04:53 about this guy what do we know about ryan ralph and what could be his motive well to talk about that i want to bring in former fbi and cia agent tracy walder who is a news nation contributor a friend of the show great to see you tracy it's only been what nine weeks since president trump was shot in the ear by Thomas Crooks during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Now here we are learning about the details about a possible second assassination attempt. What's your reaction when you heard it? Well, thank you for having me. Obviously, I was very surprised. I have never seen anything like this, you know, in my lifetime, these dual assassination attacks, excuse me, seemingly back to back. My first kind of question was, was he able to get any rounds off? And it actually sounds like he was not.

Starting point is 00:05:41 The Secret Service obviously did an excellent job. They were actually operating multiple holes in front of Trump to clear that area. So it sounds like they did a great job in terms of protecting the former president, but my kind of larger concern, if you will, is we are really sort of at this tectonic shift in terms of threats that I'm seeing to the former president. you've got threats originating from the inside the U.S. and threats originating from outside the U.S. And that's that's very unusual. Yeah. And this, my understanding, this golf course was in a pretty much open area.

Starting point is 00:06:24 And the Secret Service did a tremendous job by jumping in this immediately. But it's being reported that Ralph was allegedly near this golf course for 12 hours before this happened. And I don't know where exactly he was, but the idea that he made. made it to the bushes and allegedly had this weapon. And theoretically, if he didn't fire any shots, could have fired these shots with a scope. That's really concerning because the Secret Service has already been in the spotlight since Butler. Oh, absolutely. Obviously, this is an urban area, right?

Starting point is 00:06:55 It's not a rural area. So perimeter size is going to be different than it was in Butler, Pennsylvania, where you can have a much larger perimeter in a more rural area like that. This is obviously more urban. you've got the jail nearby, you've got Mar-a-Lago nearby, you've got several important places nearby. If he was out there for 12 hours, he could have obviously been moving around and alluded the Secret Service. They most likely would have done a perimeter sweep in the day before and then obviously

Starting point is 00:07:23 in the hours before Trump playing golf there. That's very common. And so I don't know if they would have caught him. However, I do think in a golf course of that nature where you know a former president is going to be there quite a bit playing, they probably should have not gone with a chain link fence because you can see right through that and you can see right through the bushes. And I do think a different type of fencing would have been more secure. I don't know if that lies at the feet of the Secret Service or if that lies at the feet of the Trump International Golf Course.

Starting point is 00:07:57 What I found particularly concerning was the fact that you have this GoPro, the GoPro camera, the ceramic tile. So the ceramic tile could have maybe been used, what is a form of bulletproof vest in a way? It could have been used as protective armor. The GoPro camera is being reported was the idea to live stream. It was the idea to film it. We don't know what the possibilities were, but I find those other materials also troubling. Right. I mean, clearly, Ralph was prepared. There's no question. Obviously, when you come there with all of that, the fact that, as you mentioned before, he scraped the serial number off of the gun. He didn't want to have that traceable to him. So there is no question that this

Starting point is 00:08:35 was premeditated. How long it had been premeditated for? Obviously, I don't know the answer to that. But there is no question in my mind. I feel with that GoPro that he was probably going to live stream it. This is more of a legal question, but I am curious. Do you feel that the charges that he's currently facing are almost placeholder charges? They're serious. They're definitely serious. But I imagine he could be hit with something more. I looked at, I think it's 18 USC 1751. It concerns attempted assassinations of presidents. I don't know if it says, anything about former presidents, but I imagine you could have more charges here. And it seems the feds are moving forward first. The state charges, there could be state charges, but maybe

Starting point is 00:09:18 not at this juncture. But do you feel that the two charges he's currently facing that we could see more? Obviously, I'm not an attorney, but as a former FBI agent, a lot of times that's what we would do, are exactly what you mentioned, a placeholder charge, something we know that we can detain someone forward until we can get all of that information to levy additional charges on. Those are obviously very easy charges. He has been convicted of a felony. He's not supposed to own a weapon. And obviously he did alter the weapon that he had. So those are very easy charges to keep him in custody under. So I absolutely agree those are placeholder charges. So now talking about the FBI's investigation, I want to get a little bit more into who he is, what his motive could have

Starting point is 00:09:58 been. So apparently, Ralph lived most of his life in North Carolina before moving to Hawaii. in 2018. There's an archive web page that reportedly shows that he and his son operated a company that built Sheds. Ralph apparently had a very loud voice online. He often posted on social media specifically about the war in Ukraine, and he had a fundraising website to raise money to help Keev fight back against the Russian invasion. Ralph was actually photographed by the Associated Press in April of 2022 at a small protest in Kiev two months after the invasion started. He was holding a handwritten sign that said, please, world, we need everyone here. This is good against evil. These children want normal lives. We cannot tolerate corruption and evil for another

Starting point is 00:10:41 50 plus years and Russia for our kids. He's wearing a blue jacket with an American flag on the back. Sources say Ralph was upset with former President Donald Trump's apparent stance on the war in Ukraine. And here's the thing. An officer with the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Ukrainian in Ground Forces Command, told the AP that Ralph, he's never served in the Ukrainian Army, nor collaborated with them in any way. The officer also said that Ralph has contacted the organization over the past few years, offering up plans and ideas for how to win the war, which the officer described as delusional. According to an interview that Ralph did, apparently with the New York Times last year,

Starting point is 00:11:20 he hoped to recruit Afghan soldiers who were fleeing to Taliban to fight instead in Ukraine. Tracy, listening to all this, of course, everybody wants to know a motive in situations like this. How does the FBI, which has taken point in this investigation, how do they figure this all out? I believe that Roth's social media is going to be huge in this case. He had a very, very, very large digital footprint, whereas when we saw in the case of Butler, that individual did not have as large of a digital footprint. But Ralph did. He was on there for decades, quite frankly, ranting. He initially was a pretty big supporter of Trump, actually. In 2016, he did vote for him. And he has kind of this whole host of issues. Ukraine, I think, is the largest one. He seems to be all about peace, even though what he's doing is incredibly violent. He also was very much kind of a COVID conspiracy theorist. So I don't know if some of those motives lie in policy against that. as well. It's hard to ascertain. But I do think really Ukraine is going to be key here because that

Starting point is 00:12:29 is when his sort of feelings about Trump, quite frankly, really soured and did a U-turn. And he's almost in a way sort of looking for a place to belong. And not only they also imagine have to see, was he a lone wolf? Did he have any support? Did he have any coordination? Was anybody working with him, right? That became a question immediately after Butler with Crooks. So I imagine that's happening as well. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I do think that that's something that they are looking into, although I believe that they have probably ascertained that pretty quickly

Starting point is 00:13:03 because that's one of the first things they do is what are the other threats? Who else is out there? How else could former President Trump be in danger? That's what they have to do. And I think they've probably resolved that pretty quickly. Even in looking at his social media from my perspective, he really seems like a lone wolf. And it's interesting.

Starting point is 00:13:20 You mentioned it because not all of his social media posts are in support of just one political party. There's a Twitter account that's been connected to Ralph that posted about how then President Trump could win reelection if he passed an executive order on prosecuting police misconduct. He also showed support for Democratic congressional candidates. And he seemed like you said generally, to have supported Donald Trump at one point in time, then backtrack publicly made a statement about how he made a mistake. And it is being reported that in one social media post after the Butler shooting, encouraged President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to visit those who were injured in the attack, and he wrote, apparently, Trump will never do anything.

Starting point is 00:14:03 How do you sort through, when you have a figure like Donald Trump who's quite controversial or any kind of politician, how do you sort through legitimate threats or not? You know, because clearly there's going to be people online who are not happy about someone, but to take that extra step and to take an action and here the allegation is taking an AK-47-style weapon and bringing it to a public area golf course with potentially the intent to open fire. I mean, how does law enforcement work around that? Well, therein lies the problem, Jesse, is there's so much divisiveness and just vitroal, quite frankly, to both parties. I'll just put both out there.

Starting point is 00:14:41 I'm not going to single one out. And the problem is, is there's nothing necessarily illegal in saying, hey, Harris, Biden, you should go visit them. Trump would never do that. I hate him. There's nothing necessarily illegal about that, right? And so if we look at all of his social media, just kind of piecemeal, in my opinion, as a former FBI agent, I don't think my brain would go to, oh, he's going to try to assassinate

Starting point is 00:15:06 the former president. Now, if I take it all together, yeah, there's significant. significant issues, but nowhere in any of his social media musings and their ramblings for sure, does he say what his plan is and what he's going to do? And I think that's what makes it difficult is sifting through all of that noise where freedom of speech is and really ascertaining where the threat is. By the way, one thing I wanted to ask you to that weapon, that AK-47 style weapon, if you are about 300, 500 yards away, is that an easy shot? I mean, If you think about that, how lucky is the former president right now that he wasn't in danger?

Starting point is 00:15:47 And again, we're still trying to piece together some of the circumstances of the shooting of whether shots were fired. But talking about that weapon, talking about that distance, what can you tell us? I believe it's an easy shot. At CIA, we're trained in all different kinds of weapons, AK-47 being one of them because it's a Russian weapon for the most part. It's old. It's a bit archaic of a weapon. It's not people's first choice necessarily. However, it can hit up to about 500 yards really accurately, and it can keep going longer.

Starting point is 00:16:16 So the reality is, in my opinion, he absolutely could have made a shot, if you will, if he had taken it. But again, a lot of factors are determined what kind of training he's had. He did have a scope. Obviously, that makes things a little bit easier. So I believe the former president is quite lucky because this is a shot that Ralph could have taken and made. By the way, talking about what's going to happen now, when it comes to Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Monday that Congress will be demanding more Secret Service protection for Donald Trump.

Starting point is 00:16:49 He spoke to Fox and Friends, saying he's, quote, he's the most attacked, he's the most threatened, even probably more than when he was in the Oval Office. We are demanding in the House that we have every asset available. President Joe Biden seemed to agree, retweeting in part, quote, as I've said many times, there is no place for political violence or any violence ever in our country. And I have directed my team to continue to ensure that Secret Service has every resource capability and protective measure necessary to ensure the former president's continued safety. President Biden also told reporters outside the White House that the Secret Service needs more help.

Starting point is 00:17:23 Tracy, what do you make of that? It's hard. Look, recruitment is down with the Secret Service. There is no question. It's been going down for about three or four years. So there's no question that recruitment efforts need to pick up a bit because they need more individuals. But the other issue that I mentioned earlier that we're seeing is I think we forget that just a few weeks ago, an individual with the last name of Marchant was arrested coming through the Canadian border. And he is from Pakistan and he was trying to assassinate either former President Trump or President Biden. And he was arrested doing that. So you have this outside threat from Iran, who's kind of vowing to avenge the death of Soleimani through Trump.

Starting point is 00:18:09 And then you have these inside threats as well. And so it's more than just secret service. In my opinion, it's also about intelligence collection as well overseas and here in the U.S. So yes, from a physical perspective, we need more secret service agents. However, we also have to be feeding that information from the CIA internationally. and the FBI domestically to the Secret Service so they can protect accordingly. That's a really, really good point. You know, following up on that, there was this email to supporters on his campaign website,

Starting point is 00:18:44 and Donald Trump wrote, Fear Not, I am safe and well, and no one was hurt. Thank God. He continued, I will not stop fighting for you. I will never surrender. Trump's vice presidential partner, pick, J.D. Vance said that he spoke with the former president after the incident, said that he was in good spirits, and this bipartisan task force that's already investigating the shooting at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, has also requested a briefing, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has launched his own separate investigation into this shooting.

Starting point is 00:19:14 So you have a lot of parallel investigations that are happening here. The Florida investigation will be led jointly by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Florida Highway Patrol. This is according to Governor DeSantis. And couple that also with Senator Rick Scott is talking. about proposing legislation that would increase security for former president. So when you hear all of that happening, it's a good thing, right? I think you're seeing a bipartisan effort, both with Butler and this, but at the same time, how do you think all this is going to shake out? What do you imagine can come of all of this? Well, I think this bipartisan messaging is

Starting point is 00:19:50 critically important, especially at this time as well. I think basically what they're trying to do, it sounds like, again, I'm just hypothesizing from a state point. of you is increasing state funds towards protecting the former president, as well as the places that reside within the state of Florida. And then from a federal standpoint, does the federal government need to allocate more money to protect former presidents and current presidents in places that are outside of Washington, D.C. So that's what I think is probably going on is they're conducting these investigations from a funding perspective. But that does lead me to this other point. How concerned would you be of copycats,

Starting point is 00:20:33 whether it's somebody at Trump, whether it's somebody at the current president, former president, how often do you see chatter about that after something like this? I have to be honest with you, Jesse. I am extremely concerned about copycats. I am in general very concerned about violence leading up to this election. It doesn't have a political standpoint to me to the point that I purposely made plans to leave Washington, D.C. on a 6 a.m. flight on election day because that's how concerned I am. I don't want to be there. And I think that's the first time in my life that I have ever felt that way. And so that is how concerned I am about security, honestly, around both of the candidates. To be completely honest, I'm very concerned

Starting point is 00:21:19 about copycats. I'm very concerned about foreign threats. And I'm very concerned about election violence. That's a very real and scary prediction and really it's a legitimate fear. I get it. What is the FBI do with that? What do they do? Because the reason I ask you, here's why I'm asking you, later today, and this is where I'll leave it, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office is going to be hosting, I think, a presser with the Secret Service and the FBI. There's going to be an update about what's been happening. So they're coordinating together. I'm curious about what that coordination is, but I'm curious also. The FBI is going to continue investigating this, but I think they're also probably looking out for, you know, this happened two months,

Starting point is 00:22:03 two, I don't want to say unprecedented moments, because we have had similar situations in the past, but this kind of, you know, proximity to each other is very disturbing. What is the FBI do now to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again? And look, the Secret Service's job is to protect the president. I get it, but the FBI has a role also in investigating this and making sure that no threats turn into actual plots. So in my opinion, it's kind of what I mentioned before. It's going to be all about intelligence and intelligence gathering. And that's where I think the FBI is assisting because that's what they're capable of doing.

Starting point is 00:22:38 That's what they have analysts that do all day long. Again, the Secret Service is more physical security. And so the FBI, I think they've done a lot of changes, quite frankly, since 1-6, because they really failed there in terms of gathering intelligence and then passing it down to local law enforcement, which is really what we saw on Butler, quite frankly, with the Secret Service not telling local law enforcement. And so I do think that they're trying to shore up those areas of communication and miscommunication, but also really focus their intelligence gathering efforts on the election itself, on the former president, and on the current precedent because they have different intelligence gathering missions,

Starting point is 00:23:17 and I think that's where they're going to be focusing it now. Tracy Walder, thank you so much for coming on. I really, really appreciate your insight, especially with this kind of breaking news that's been happening. I know you're really busy with everything happening with this, but again, thank you so much for coming on. I think we all have a good sense of what's happening here, what needs to happen. And unfortunately, I share a lot of your same concerns and fears. So hopefully those, you know, are just fears and concerns and won't turn into anything. But I hear you. Tracy, thank you so much. Thank you, Jesse. Right, everybody. That's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. or Spotify.

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Law&Crime Sidebar - 8 Shocking Details of Donald Trump’s Would-Be Assassin's Arrest at Golf Club

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