Ryan Wesley Routh, the Democratic donor who tried to shoot Trump in West Palm Beach

Authorities identified Ryan Wesley Routh as the man who tried to open fire on Donald Trump on Sunday in the vicinity of his golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla. It is the second attack against Trump in two months.

According to preliminary information, Secret Service agents intercepted him and opened fire on the 58-year-old man when he was hiding in bushes and aiming an AK-47-type rifle at the Republican candidate.

According to the information that has surfaced, Routh has a long criminal record in several states. His first run-ins with law enforcement date back to before the 2000s. Of particular note was a 2002 incident that required a heavy police deployment to arrest Routh, who barricaded himself on the roof of the construction company where he worked after a traffic incident involving a firearm.

Routh's name surfaced just a few years ago in the media when The New York Times interviewed him in the wake of his commitment to the Ukrainian war effort following Russia's invasion in 2022. Routh, who said he would have gone on to fight on the Ukrainian side, did intend to organize an operation to bring Afghan fighters opposed to the Taliban regime to the Ukrainian front.

As reported by NYT, the shooter wrote messages on his (now defunct) social media pages in support of Ukraine and in which he declared his willingness to die in combat against Russian forces. "I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER AND FIGHT AND DIE," Routh wrote in a post on his suspended X account.

On the same social network, the shooter reposted many posts echoing the rhetoric of those who oppose Donald Trump's reelection in November. According to the The New York Post, Routh claimed that Trump wants to "make Americans slaves against master."

In the same vein, Routh had repeated in several posts that this November, American democracy was at stake, thus warning of the supposed danger of Donald Trump's reelection.

Routh registered as a Democrat to vote in the party's primary that took place in March of this year in North Carolina. During the same election period, he donated $100 to Act Blue, which manages funds for Democratic Party campaigns, according to Axios.

After being detected and fleeing from the area surrounding Donald Trump's golf course, Routh attempted to escape in an SUV before being shot several times by Secret Service agents and then taken into custody. The FBI is conducting the investigation into the incident.