Armed man shot dead at Mar-a-Lago was obsessed with Epstein files, reports say

Joseph Wilkinson, New York Daily News on Feb 23, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

The armed man who was shot dead at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort was focused on the Epstein files but also a Trump backer, according to reports.

Austin Tucker Martin, a 21-year-old North Carolina man, had been reading the files released by the Justice Department on its investigations into Jeffrey Epstein.

“I don’t know if you read up on the Epstein files, but evil is real and unmistakable,” Martin wrote in a message to a co-worker obtained by TMZ. “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.”

Sources also told TMZ that Martin fixated on the files while working at a local golf club and told co-workers the government was covering something up while powerful people were “getting away with it.”

Despite Martin’s concern over the files, which mention Trump more than 30,000 times, he remained an avid supporter of the president, according to friends, family and co-workers who spoke with multiple outlets following the Sunday morning incident.

“He is from a very pro-Trump family and fit into that narrative,” Martin’s officer in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, Clarice Bonillo, 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.”

Two Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy shot Martin dead around 1:30 a.m. after he attempted to drive into Mar-a-Lago as another vehicle exited, authorities said.

Martin was carrying a shotgun and a gas can, police said. When he encountered the cops, he put down the gas can but raised the shotgun, according to the Secret Service. He did not fire any shots.

Trump and his family frequently spend weekends at their Palm Beach, Florida, property, but they were in Washington, D.C., at the time of Martin’s failed intrusion. Trump previously survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, and the feds caught another man scheming to shoot him two months later on a golf course near Mar-a-Lago.

_____