The man suspected of planning to assassinate former President Donald Trump had been reported to U.S. federal officials long before he was arrested in Florida on Sunday, according to a news report published Tuesday.
In fact, a nurse who encountered Ryan Wesley Routh in Ukraine was so worried about his activities that she contacted the FBI in 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal.
And it wasn’t the first time his name had been brought to the bureau’s attention.
Routh is an outspoken leftist with a felony conviction from 2002 for possession of a fully automatic machine gun, according to the New York Post.
He was taken into custody after fleeing from Trump International Golf Course near West Palm Beach, where he’d apparently been frighted off by gunfire from a Secret Service agent.
Left behind at the scene were “a loaded SKS-style, 7.62×39 caliber rifle with a scope” with the serial number defaced, a backpack and a GoPro camera.
He faces 20 years in prison on weapons charges alone.