More from the article ...
... Last month, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the Secret Service discovered a "suspicious" hunting stand near Palm Beach International Airport with a direct sight line to where President Donald Trump exits Air Force One.
"The FBI has since taken the investigatory lead," Patel said in a statement, "flying in resources to collect all evidence from the scene and deploying our cell phone analytics capabilities."
Now, two weeks later, a Florida reptile hunter who calls himself the Python Cowboy says he's convinced the FBI is barking up the wrong tree.
Mike Kimmel, owner of Martin County Trapping and Wildlife Rescue, told NBC News that the elevated stand has been there for years and the only mystery is whether it was set up by a hunter, birder or wildlife photographer.
"When we had first seen it, Joe Biden was president," Kimmel said. "And it looked old and dilapidated at the time. It never gave, like, a suspicious vibe."
A professional trapper for over a decade, Kimmel operates across southern Florida, removing invasive species like Burmese pythons, green iguanas and feral hogs. He also guides hunting trips, with the help of his specially trained dogs " Trouble, Rooster and Rowdy, among others. ...
Kimmel said he first noticed the tree stand identified by Patel a couple of years ago.
"It never crossed our minds that it would be used by someone taking a shot at the president or anything like that," Kimmel said. ...
Kimmel said the Secret Service reached out to him after the first assassination attempt and told him to refrain from going on hunts in the area for the next week or so.
"We respected that," he said. "We're out there with air guns and everything. It can look suspicious."
If you spend as much time in that area as he does, Kimmel said, there's plenty of other things that you could see. ...
