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Former president Donald Trump is safe after what the FBI is investigating as a potential assassination attempt in south Florida, just two months after another gunman tried to kill the Republican presidential candidate.
The suspected attack on Trump’s life comes little more than seven weeks before he faces vice-president Kamala Harris in a tense and closely fought presidential election.
Trump released a statement on Sunday afternoon declaring: “FEAR NOT! I am safe and well, and no one was hurt. Thank God!”
The FBI said it “responded to West Palm Beach, Florida, and is investigating what appears to be an attempted assassination of former president Trump”.
Law enforcement officials have detained a man who they said had been hiding in bushes bordering the Trump International Golf Club, where the former president was golfing, on Sunday afternoon. They found an AK-47 style rifle with a scope, two backpacks containing ceramic tile and a GoPro camera in the bushes, Ric Bradshaw, Palm Beach County Sheriff, told reporters on Sunday.
A Secret Service agent opened fire on the man after spotting a rifle through the golf course’s fence, Bradshaw said. Trump was probably between 300 and 500 yards away, he added.
A witness saw the potential suspect run out of the bushes before jumping into a car and driving away. Law enforcement officers later pulled the vehicle over and detained the man, Bradshaw said.
Jeffrey Veltri, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office, said the agency had deployed resources including bomb technicians and investigative teams.
Florida state prosecutors were putting together warrants and a motion for pre-trial detention for the suspect, said Dave Aronberg, state attorney for Palm Beach county, adding state charges would not prevent potential federal charges.
If confirmed as an assassination attempt, the incident in Florida would mark the second time that Trump has been targeted by a gunman in this campaign.
At an election rally in western Pennsylvania in July, Trump was injured in the ear while he was speaking. After hiding behind his podium, the former president stood up, pumped his fist, and shouted “Fight fight fight” before he was rushed to hospital, in one of the more enduring images of the campaign.
At the time of that attack on his life, Trump was riding high in the polls, having trounced Joe Biden, the US president, in a debate in late June.
A wave of sympathy accompanied Trump’s formal White House nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in the days after the attack. But he is facing a much tougher race now, after Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic candidate and outperformed him at a new debate held last week.
Harris posted on X: “I have been briefed on reports of gunshots fired near former president Trump and his property in Florida, and I am glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.”
With the country on edge, the Secret Service on Sunday said it had “increased the amount of assets” since the Pennsylvania incident, for which the agency has been fiercely criticised.
“The threat level is high,” the Secret Service official said.
Trump was at the golf club near his Mar-a-Lago resort on Sunday after a tumultuous few days on the campaign trail.
According to the Financial Times’ national poll tracker, Harris is leading Trump by 2.1 percentage points. The former president has been criticised, even within his own party, for his debate performance, as well as for launching baseless accusations against Haitian immigrants in Springfield Ohio, saying they were abducting and eating pets in the small Midwestern city.
The former president has also raised eyebrows by surrounding himself with fringe far-right social media personalities such as Laura Loomer, who just last week launched xenophobic attacks against Harris over her racial heritage.
On Sunday morning, Trump lashed out at Taylor Swift, one of the world’s most famous and popular musicians, for endorsing Harris.
“I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” he wrote on Truth Social, in a series of posts that included an attack on the New York Times for being a “threat to democracy” and a jibe at “rich people” who support Harris for being “STUPID”.
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