Man found guilty of trying to assassinate Trump in Florida

By DAVID C. ADAMS and PATRICIA MAZZEI

A man who plotted to kill President Donald Trump last year and staked him out at one of his Florida golf courses with a semiautomatic rifle was found guilty Tuesday of attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Ryan W. Routh, 59, an itinerant building contractor from North Carolina, was also found guilty of assaulting a federal officer and several firearm violations. The 12-member jury deliberated for about 2 1/2 hours, following a fast-moving trial in which Routh chose to defend himself without a lawyer.

After the verdict was read in court, Routh appeared to try to stab himself in the neck several times with a pen. Several United States marshals restrained him and removed him from the courtroom. He returned a few minutes later, shackled and escorted by marshals. His necktie and jacket had been removed, but he did not appear to be injured.

As he was being led out, Routh’s daughter, Sara Routh, one of several relatives present, started screaming. She yelled vulgarities and told her father that she loved him and would fight to get him out of prison.

Sara Routh declined to comment after court adjourned.

Prosecutors said that on Sept. 15, 2024, Ryan Routh pointed his rifle, with its serial number scratched off, at a Secret Service agent who spotted him in the shrubbery at the Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach. (Routh denied that he ever took aim at anyone.) The agent fired at him, and Routh fled without firing any shots of his own. Police stopped him about 45 minutes later, driving north on Interstate 95.

“Make no mistake: The defendant was going to kill Donald Trump,” Christopher B. Browne, one of the federal prosecutors, said during his closing argument. “The defendant was just one bullet away.”

It was the second assassination attempt against Trump last year, when he was running for a new term in office.

Opening statements in the trial took place the day after influential right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot, adding to a national surge in political violence.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement after the verdict that Routh’s conviction illustrated the Justice Department’s “commitment to punishing those who engage in political violence.”

“This attempted assassination was not only an attack on our president, but an affront to our very nation itself,” she said.

Routh is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 18.

The rare trial of a would-be presidential assassin was made more unusual because Routh chose to represent himself without a lawyer. His decision made the trial a lopsided one from the start, when Judge Aileen Cannon cut off Routh’s opening statement for lack of relevance. Routh’s brief cross-examinations of prosecution witnesses and the small number of defense witnesses he called made the trial much shorter than expected, lasting just 12 days.

Cannon presided in 2023 over a federal prosecution of Trump involving the mishandling of classified documents, a case she dismissed last summer.

After Routh’s arrest last year, public records and interviews with people who knew him suggested that he had become increasingly concerned over the war in Ukraine and saw himself as an influential participant in world events. Earlier this year, he told the judge that he did not trust two court-appointed federal public defenders to represent him. Even so, they were kept on standby during the trial.

At one point Monday, when the judge tried to explain certain rules of evidence, Routh responded, “I have no clue what that means.”

He offered little in the way of a defense and did not testify himself. He called three witnesses, a firearms expert and two character witnesses, all of whom testified Monday morning, after seven days of prosecution testimony.

He told jurors during his closing argument Tuesday that prosecutors had not proven “any intent” to kill.

“The opportunity was there for the defendant to shoot the president, and yet the trigger was never pulled,” said Routh, who wore a dark jacket and red-striped tie in court. “This human being does not have the capability to harm another human being.”

Prosecutors presented testimony and evidence from a large number of law enforcement officers and other witnesses. One witness, Special Agent Kimberly McGreevy of the FBI’s Miami office, testified for more than six hours on Thursday and Friday, twice as long as all three of Routh’s witnesses combined.

One expert called by the prosecution testified about finding Routh’s fingerprint on the rifle scope. Another spoke about finding two bullet-resistant metal plates mounted to the golf course fence. A third said the rifle’s safety was in the off position when it was recovered. The Secret Service agent who spotted Routh hiding in an improvised sniper’s nest by the golf course fence described how he saw a rifle muzzle pointing through the foliage and then a pair of eyes only a few feet away from him.

McGreevy showed jurors how investigators had pieced together Routh’s movements in Palm Beach County using cellphone records, license plate readers, bank statements, retail store receipts and security videos.

According to prosecutors, Routh lived out of a Nissan SUV for weeks as he cased the golf course, searched online for Trump’s campaign schedule and watched his private plane at Palm Beach International Airport. Among the evidence authorities obtained were six cellphones, several license plates and notes about possible escape flights to Mexico and Colombia.

Routh had also left a box at a friend’s house in North Carolina months before his arrest. A letter in the box read, “Dear World, This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you.” The letter also offered a $150,000 bounty for killing the candidate.