Ryan Routh just got sentenced to life in prison for pointing a rifle at Trump on a golf course – and Democrats responded by shutting down the Secret Service's paycheck.
Two weeks later, a 21-year-old drove through the front gate of Mar-a-Lago at 1:30 in the morning carrying a shotgun and a gas can.
What a text message he sent seven days earlier explains why this story is about to get very complicated.
The Text Message That Changes Everything
Austin Tucker Martin texted a coworker exactly one week before he died.
"I don't know if you read up on the Epstein Files, but evil is real and unmistakable," he wrote on February 15.
He told the coworker to use whatever influence they had to spread the word – that powerful people were "getting away with it" and someone needed to raise awareness.
Martin drove from North Carolina to Palm Beach, bought a shotgun somewhere along the way – the box was still in his car – and breached the secure perimeter of the President's home in the middle of the night.
Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy ordered him to drop the shotgun and gas can.
He put down the gas can.
Then he raised the shotgun.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw described what happened next: the agents and the deputy "fired their weapons to neutralize the threat."
https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/2025772893377052931?s=20
Democrats Defunded the Agents Who Just Saved Trump's Life
Here's what Karoline Leavitt posted the moment the story broke: "In the middle of the night while most Americans were asleep, the United States Secret Service acted quickly and decisively to neutralize a crazy person, armed with a gun and a gas canister, who intruded President Trump's home."
Then she went straight at Democrats.
"It's shameful and reckless that Democrats have chosen to shut down their Department."
She's right – and the timing is not subtle.
Democrats triggered a partial government shutdown on February 14 by blocking DHS funding over Trump's deportation campaign.
The Secret Service is a DHS agency.
Stephen Miller put it plainly on X: "Never before in history has federal law enforcement been purposefully defunded."
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went further on Fox News – calling this the third assassination attempt on Trump and blaming Democrats directly for the escalating violence targeting the President.
https://twitter.com/StephenM/status/2025584588685259173?s=20
What the Epstein Files Actually Did to People Like Martin
The DOJ released 3.5 million pages of Epstein documents on January 30 – two weeks before Martin's text message, three weeks before he drove to Mar-a-Lago.
The files included 180,000 images and 2,000 videos seized from Epstein's properties.
Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act himself – his administration forced the release.
But here's what the release also did: it poured accelerant on years of conspiracy theories about powerful people who "got away with it."
Coworkers at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club in North Carolina told TMZ that Martin couldn't stop talking about the January document dump – fixated on who he believed had escaped justice and convinced the whole thing was being buried.
Martin's own cousin Braeden Fields couldn't believe any of it: "We are big Trump supporters, all of us. Everybody."
He described Martin as "real quiet" and said his cousin "wouldn't even hurt an ant."
https://twitter.com/AnnieForTruth/status/2025938762430050789?s=20
Martin had tried to start a union at work to push for higher wages – nobody signed on – and was still living with his parents because he couldn't afford anything else.
The FBI is now the lead agency on the investigation, with Director Kash Patel pledging to dedicate "all necessary resources."
Martin's family had reported him missing the same morning he died.
The psychological profile investigators are building tells a story the left will twist themselves into knots over – a kid from a Trump family, driven off the rails not by conservative politics but by three years of Democrat-amplified Epstein conspiracy theories that CNN, MSNBC, and every liberal politician with a microphone spent years mainlining into the public bloodstream to damage Trump.
The agents who stopped him were working for free.
Sources:
- Anthony Guglielmi, U.S. Secret Service statement, February 22, 2026.
- Ric Bradshaw, Palm Beach County Sheriff press conference, February 22, 2026.
- Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary statement, X, February 22, 2026.
- Kash Patel, FBI Director statement, X, February 22, 2026.
- TMZ, "Armed Man Shot Dead at Mar-a-Lago Was Fixated on Epstein Files, Text Shows," February 22, 2026.
- Department of Justice, "Department of Justice Publishes 3.5 Million Responsive Pages in Compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act," January 30, 2026.
