Suspect said he knew why he was arrested after incident at Trump's golf club, officials say | Donald Trump

Cellphone records of the man accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump at his Florida golf course on Sunday show that he lay in wait nearby for nearly 12 hours before a Secret Service agent protecting the former president shot him.

When the authorities arrested him during his hasty retreat, he is said to have told them that he knew exactly why they were arresting him.

These details emerged in a criminal complaint that was unsealed after the man alleged to have planned the attempt on Trump's life appeared for a preliminary hearing in federal court on Monday.

The new documents state that the suspect in the case, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, had previously asked his social media followers to contact him at a specific cellphone number. Investigators later found that that specific number could be found on or near a line of trees along the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, between approximately 1:59 a.m. and 1:31 p.m. on Sunday, an FBI agent wrote in the unsealed documents.

At the end of that period, a Secret Service agent walking the perimeter of the golf course while Trump was golfing there noticed “what appeared to be a rifle sticking out of the line of trees,” the complaint says.

The agent pulled out a gun and fired in the direction of the rifle. A passerby then saw a man, later identified as Routh, emerge from the line of trees and flee in a Nissan SUV.

Authorities said they soon found an SKS rifle with a scope, a digital camera and at least three bags – including one containing food – in the area from which Routh fled. The serial number of the 7.62 mm rifle was “obscured and [was] illegible,” said the FBI agent who wrote the complaint.

Officers from two local sheriff's offices later stopped Routh as he sped north on Interstate 95 around 2:15 p.m. “Routh was asked if he knew why he was being stopped,” the complaint states. “He stated that he did.”

The complaint noted that the Nissan's license plate was not for the vehicle, but rather was registered to a white Ford truck that had been reported stolen.

Authorities did not immediately charge Routh with attempting to assassinate the president, although they still may do so. Instead, they charged him with possession of a firearm despite having previously been convicted of a crime that prohibited him from legally owning one – and also with illegally possessing a gun with an obliterated serial number.

The first of these charges stemmed from Routh's 2002 conviction in Greensboro, North Carolina, for illegally possessing what one media report called a “fully automatic machine gun.” According to the Greensboro News & Record, Routh barricaded himself inside his roofing business during a three-hour standoff before leading police on a chase and eventually surrendering.

A second felony conviction mentioned in Monday's criminal complaint involved multiple counts of possession of stolen goods.

The complaint does not address what might have motivated Routh to stick the muzzle of a rifle into Trump's golf course while the Republican presidential candidate was playing there. Routh's son, Oran, told the Guardian on Sunday that he cared about Ukraine's cause in the war against Russia.

Trump, who is seeking a second presidency in November, refused to answer a question in a recent televised debate about whether he wanted Ukraine to win that war, raising renewed fears that he might cut off American military aid to Ukrainian troops if voters return him to the White House. The former president also successfully lobbied lawmakers loyal to him to delay approval of additional military aid to Ukraine for months earlier this year.

Routh's hearing on Monday lasted eight minutes and prosecutors announced the first charges against him. He could be sentenced to 15 years in prison if convicted of illegal possession of a firearm and five years in connection with the other charge.

Trump survived another assassination attempt at a political rally in Pennsylvania on July 13. The gunman shot and killed one bystander and seriously wounded two other rally attendees before being killed by a Secret Service sniper.