The armed man who was shot dead outside Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was a troubled Trump supporter who was fixated on the Epstein files, according to friends and family.
Austin Tucker Martin, 21, was shot and killed by Secret Service agents at around 1:30 a.m Sunday. He was holding what appeared to be a shotgun and a can of fuel. Trump, 79, was in Washington, D.C., at the time of the shooting.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the 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.”
Praising federal law enforcement, Leavitt used her social media post to take a dig at her political opponents, adding, “It’s shameful and reckless that Democrats have chosen to shut down their Department.”
Now those close to him have revealed Martin’s political views skewed right, and revealed he was suspicious about how the Trump administration was handling the Epstein files.
His cousin, Braeden Fields, 19, said Martin came from a MAGA-friendly family.
“We are big Trump supporters, all of us. Everybody,” Fields said, noting his cousin was “real quiet, never really talked about anything.”
“I wouldn’t believe he would do something like this. It’s mind-blowing,” Fields told The Sun. Public records show Martin is from Cameron, North Carolina, where he was designated missing on Saturday.
Martin sent a text message to a co-worker at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club in North Carolina that demonstrated he had become obsessed with the Trump administration’s handling of the files relating to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
TMZ reported that Martin’s message, sent on Feb. 15, read, “I don’t know if you read up on the Epstein Files, but evil is real and unmistakable.”
He continued, “The best people like you and I can do is use what little influence we have. Tell other people about what you hear about the Epstein files and what the government is doing about it. Raise awareness.”
The site said co-workers told them Martin was “deeply disturbed” by what he felt was a “government cover-up” over Epstein and had repeatedly talked about powerful people “getting away with it.”
He was “outspoken” about his Christian faith, and TMZ said he had told his colleagues as recently as late last year that he felt Trump was a strong leader.
People close to Martin also said he was “increasingly frustrated, particularly about the economy,” and still lived with his parents, as he believed young people need two jobs or roommates to afford moving out of home.
Three of Martin’s high school friends confirmed that he had expressed conservative viewpoints to his classmates.
“He is from a very pro-Trump family and fit into that narrative,” Clarice Bonillo, who was his officer in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, told The New York Times.
“But he wouldn’t go out of his way to bash anybody from the left side or start arguments or anything like that. He had his opinion, and he mostly kept it to himself.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
The thwarted attack on Trump’s Florida mansion follows the Department of Justice releasing over 3 million files related to Epstein last month, leaving an estimated 3 million documents in the FBI vaults.
Trump has insisted the latest dump of files absolves him of any wrongdoing.
“I’m the expert in a way because I’ve been totally exonerated,” the president claimed after the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. “It’s very nice. So I can actually speak about it very nicely.”
