Federal agents are investigating after saying they found a hunting stand within sight of where Donald Trump typically exits Air Force One before a recent trip to West Palm Beach, Florida, by the president.
The US Secret Service said it made the discovery while conducting technological and physical security sweeps around the airport in West Palm Beach, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is, in advance of the president traveling there on Friday.
A statement to the news media from Anthony Guglielmi, the Secret Service spokesperson, said agents did not spot anyone near the hunting stand.
Kash Patel separately provided a statement reported by Fox News which described the hunting stand as being “elevated” and “within sight line of the Air Force One landing zone”. An image of it circulated by the Secret Service showed it was in a tree.
The Trump-appointed FBI director’s statement added that his agency had “since taken the investigatory lead, flying in resources to collect all evidence from the scene and deploying our cell phone analytics capabilities”.
Guglielmi’s statement said finding the hunting stand did not affect any of the president’s movements. Nonetheless, in trying to determine more about it, the Secret Service was “working closely” with both the FBI and local law enforcement in the West Palm Beach area, Guglielmi’s statement said.
Trump on Sunday was seen boarding Air Force One using the plane’s small stairs because of what officials called “increased security measures” in the wake of the hunting stand.
The hunting stand in question was reported about a month after a state jury in Florida convicted Ryan Routh, 59, of trying to assassinate Trump on his West Palm Beach golf course two months before clinching his second presidency in the 2024 White House election.
A Secret Service agent spotted Routh with a rifle hiding in bushes as Trump’s golfing party approached on 15 September 2024. The agent fired on Routh, who initially fled but was later captured driving north.
Meanwhile, on 13 July 2024, Trump narrowly survived an attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. In the earlier case, Thomas Crooks, 20, fired eight shots at Trump, with one bullet grazing his ear, officials have said. Officials said Crooks also killed one spectator while wounding two others before being shot to death by Secret Service counter-snipers.
The cases involving Routh and Crooks have often been mentioned alongside several other instances of political violence just before and during Trump’s second presidency, which began in January.
The home of Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania Democratic governor, was firebombed in April, with the arsonist pleading guilty on 14 October. In June, related shootings killed Minnesota’s former House speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, while wounding John Hoffman – her fellow Democrat, a state senator – and his wife, Yvette.
And in September, conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was shot to death while speaking at Utah Valley University.
