The FBI will take over the investigation after an armed man was killed early Sunday while breaching President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago property because the agency investigates all assaults on anyone under Secret Service protection, former Secret Service agent Jeffrey Gaines told Newsmax.
"That's standard protocol," Gaines said to Newsmax's "Sunday Report." "The FBI investigates any assaults on anyone the Secret Service protects, just to make sure that there isn't any appearance of impropriety."
The incident happened around 1:30 a.m. when two Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy confronted the suspect, identified by sources as Austin Tucker Martin, 21, of North Carolina.
The suspect, who had a shotgun and a gas canister, breached the property on the north side and was told to put down his gun, but did not comply and was shot and killed.
Gaines said the combination of a gun and a gas canister suggested some level of planning, but he questioned whether the suspect understood where the president was at the time.
"They obviously had a plan for multiple weapons, but the plan wasn't very good," Gaines said. "If they were looking to target the president because the president wasn't there."
Gaines said one possible explanation is that the suspect intended to use the gas canister to create an opening at the perimeter.
"Maybe he had the plan that, if he reached a point he needed to breach, to somehow detonate the gas can to get it to eliminate that breach point and then go in shooting," he said. "But again, without the president being there, his primary target would have never been found."
Asked about potential vulnerabilities at the sprawling property, Gaines said no site can be perfectly sealed, but the goal is to prevent any single failure from turning into a direct path to the protectee.
"There's always going to be little gaps in security. It is a gigantic property," he said. "But what you want to eliminate, what the Secret Service endeavors to eliminate with the partnership of our law enforcement partners, is that single point of failure."
He added, however, that even if someone breaches the property's outer perimeter, "there's going to be tripwires, and people and technology that are going to let the Secret Service and their law enforcement partners know immediately."
"There isn't a single point of failure that someone could get through and get to the president," he added.
Trump was not at Mar-a-Lago at the time of the breach.
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