The FBI said Sunday it was investigating “what appears to be an attempted assassination” of Donald Trump at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, just nine weeks after the Republican presidential nominee survived another attempt on his life. Trump said he was safe and well.
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00:00Former President Donald Trump is safe and unharmed following a protective incident shortly before
00:062 p.m. on Sunday at Trump International Golf Club at West Palm Beach. The U.S. Secret Service
00:13personnel opened fire on a gunman located near the property line and this matter is under
00:19investigation. In the bushes where this guy was is an AK-47 style rifle with a scope,
00:27two backpacks which were hung on the fence that had a ceramic tile in them and a GoPro
00:33which he was going to take pictures of. So those are being processed right now.
00:38The Secret Service agent that was on the course did a fantastic job. What they do is they have
00:46an agent that jumps one hole ahead of time to where the president was at
00:50and he was able to spot this rifle barrel sticking out of the fence and immediately
00:55engage that individual at which time the individual took off. Because we're in constant
01:00contact with them all the time we were notified of that and we had units here that immediately
01:07sealed off the area. Fortunately we were able to locate a witness that came to us and said hey
01:14I saw the guy running out of the bushes he jumped into a black Nissan and I took a picture of the
01:21vehicle and the tank which was great. So we had that information our real-time crime center put
01:29it out to the license plate readers and we were able to get a hit on that vehicle on I-95 as it
01:39was headed into Martin County. We got a hold of Martin County Sheriff's Office alerted them and
01:45they spotted the vehicle and pulled it over and detained the guy. After that we took the victim
01:53I'm sorry the witness that witnessed the incident took flew him up there and he identified as the
02:00person that he saw running out of the bushes and jumped into the car. The FBI has assumed the role
02:05as the lead federal law enforcement agency in the investigation of the incident that occurred
02:11earlier today at Trump International Golf Course here in West Palm Beach Florida.
02:17We've deployed a number of resources including investigative teams, crisis response team members,
02:24bomb technicians and evidence response team members as well. What we need right now is for
02:32the public to avoid the area around the golf course. We will continue to support this investigation
02:38with the full resources of the FBI alongside our partners with the United States Secret Service
02:44and the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office as well as Martin County Sheriff's Office
02:48and state and local law enforcement. I'm here because our prosecutors are currently working up
02:54warrants and a motion for pre-trial detention for the suspect in that way he will be kept in custody
03:02but our filing of these warrants and charges at the state level does not preclude federal
03:07charge that could be coming but in the meantime it looks like the warrants and the pre-trial
03:13detention motion will happen first. Probably between 300 and 500 yards but with a rifle and
03:19a scope like that that's not a long distance. Well you got to understand the golf course is
03:25surrounded by shrubbery so when somebody gets into the shrubbery they're pretty much out of sight
03:30all right and at this level that he is at right now he's not the sitting president. If he was we
03:36would have had this higher golf course around it but because he's not the security is limited to
03:41the areas that the Secret Service deems possible. So I would imagine that the next time he comes
03:48at a golf course there'll probably be a little bit more people around the perimeter but the
03:53Secret Service did exactly what they should have done. They provided exactly what the
03:57protection should have been and their agent did a fantastic job.