Ryan Routh was camped out for 12 hours and didn't have Trump in his line of sight when Secret Service fired at him

The man arrested in connection with an apparent attempt to assassinate Donald Trump is a former supporter who turned against the former president in part for foreign policy reasons and later traveled to Ukraine, where he made an ill-fated attempt to raise a volunteer force to fight the Russians.

The revelations about Ryan Wesley Routh emerged Monday, a day after a Secret Service agent rousted him from a hiding place at the West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course where Trump had been playing. Sheriff’s deputies later took him into custody.

Routh, it was revealed in court papers, had been camped out in a wooded area with a loaded SKS-style rifle near the course for 12 hours before he was spotted, raising new questions about whether the Secret Service was doing enough to protect a politician who had already survived one assassination attempt.

Trump was on the fifth fairway and not in Routh’s line of sight when the agent “engaged” the suspect, said Ronald Rowe, acting director of the Secret Service. Routh also never fired his weapon.

But Routh, 58, was equipped to kill, the criminal complaint said.

In addition to a digital camera and two bags, investigators found a loaded SKS-style 7.62x39 caliber rifle with a scope that had an “obliterated” serial number and a black plastic bag containing food likely to sustain Routh while he waited in the wooded area.

Routh was arraigned Monday at the Paul G. Rogers Federal Court House in West Palm Beach on charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

The FBI has confirmed it is investigating “an apparent attempted assassination” of Trump on Sunday, but so far Routh has not been charged with trying to kill him.

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