The FBI is investigating another potential oversight in President Trump’s security.
A suspicious hunting stand was found nested in tree with a direct line of sight to Air Force One in Palm Beach on Thursday. Donald Trump landed at the airport in Florida the following day.
FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News Digital: ‘Prior to the President’s return to West Palm Beach, USSS discovered what appeared to be an elevated hunting stand within sight line of the Air Force One landing zone.
‘No individuals were located at the scene. The FBI has since taken the investigatory lead, flying in resources to collect all evidence from the scene, and deploying our cell phone analytics capabilities.’
The stand has not been tied to any individual.
The Secret Service was ‘working closely’ with the FBI as well as law enforcement in Palm Beach County.
Spokesman Anthony Guglielmi also told Fox that ‘there was no impact to any movements and no individuals were present or involved at the location.’
‘While we are not able to provide details about the specific items or their intent, this incident underscores the importance of our layered security measures,’ Guglielmi also stated.
President Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One on Friday at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. He is spending his weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida
The hunting stand, found by the Secret Service, near the airport Trump uses in Florida
An additional law enforcement source noted that the stand seems to have been put in place ‘months ago.’
The eyebrow-raising potential lapse by the Secret Service in the president’s security comes less than a month since Ryan Routh was found guilty on all charges related to the September 2024 plot to kill the then-presidential candidate.
Donald Trump’s would-be assassin began stabbing himself in the neck with a pen in a Florida courtroom after jurors reached a unanimous verdict last month.
Routh managed to get close to Trump as the now-President partook in a round of golf at his Trump International Golf Club property in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Routh was arrested after he was seen holding a rifle through a fence by a Secret Service agent.
Former FBI supervisory special agent John Nantz, also now a Townhall columnist, told the Daily Mail in July that Routh shouldn’t have even gotten that close.
‘I have heard that … it wasn’t a scheduled movement, okay. Well, I get that, but I’m not really sure I’m satisfied with that explanation,’ Nantz noted.
‘I think probably at that time, you’re still talking about resource allocation problems,’ Nantz added.
Limited resources were also given as a cause for the lapse in security at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which took place on July 13, 2024.
Trump was not, at the time, yet the official GOP presidential nominee.
By September of last year, Trump was allegedly supposed to have already had a presidential-level detail.
The first major attempt on Trump’s life came on July 13, 2024 during a rally at the Farm Show Grounds in Butler, where 20-year-old gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks perched atop a building just beyond the perimeter gates.
Crooks was able to fire off a series of bullets aimed at Trump’s head – one of which grazed his ear – before officers took him down.
