A Florida jury on Tuesday found Ryan Wesley Routh guilty of trying to kill Donald Trump while he was on his West Palm Beach golf course last year. Routh, who represented himself in the two-week-long trial, was convicted of the attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, assaulting a federal officer, being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition, possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number, and possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.
He faces a potential sentence of life in prison.
After the five guilty verdicts were announced and jurors began filing out of the courtroom, Routh tried to stab himself in the neck with a pen, according to the Associated Press. U.S. marshals who had been stationed just a few feet away from Routh throughout the trial quickly surrounded him and stopped him.
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His daughter Sara Routh, who attended the trial daily with one of her two brothers, screamed, “Dad, I love you; don’t do anything. I’ll get you out. He didn’t hurt anybody,” according to the AP.
The jury at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, took less than three hours to deliberate the charges before returning the guilty verdicts to Judge Aileen M. Cannon. Federal prosecutors spent seven days building their case, presenting 38 witnesses and questioning them at length on the stand.
Routh, who fired his public defenders two months before the trial began, declined to cross-examine many of the witnesses or asked just a few questions. Cannon ruled much of what Routh said out of order, such as when he told the witness who testified that he heard shots and saw Routh running from the golf course and followed him to get his license plate number that he was “an American hero.”
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Cannon warned Routh repeatedly to stay within the bounds of the law, admonishing him before his closing argument, “This can’t be your opportunity to provide pseudo-testimony outside the context of sworn testimony,” the AP reported.
He presented only three witnesses: a firearms expert and two character witnesses.
In his closing statement, Routh told jurors, “It’s hard for me to believe that a crime occurred if the trigger was never pulled,” according to the AP.
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Prosecutors said Routh spent weeks planning to attack Trump, who was a presidential candidate at the time, on one of his frequent visits to Trump International Golf Club. They collected surveillance video of Routh living in his car at a gas station in the small agricultural town of Belle Glade, Florida, about 40 miles from Trump’s country club.
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Federal prosecutor John Shipley told jurors Routh also went to the Palm Beach International Airport to scout out the nearby hangar where Trump’s private jet is kept.
Secret Service agents testified that Routh had propped up a semiautomatic rifle through a chain-link fence. The agent who first noticed it said the barrel was moving in his direction, so he opened fire. Routh fled the scene and was arrested in his car on Interstate 95 about an hour later.
The Sept. 15, 2024, attempt on Trump’s life came just nine weeks after Trump had survived an attack while campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania. A gunman fired eight shots, with one bullet grazing Trump’s ear. The gunman was then fatally shot by a Secret Service countersniper.
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In the months leading up to the golf course incident, Routh described himself as a failure. He was running a small business building tiny homes and sheds in Hawaii. He had tried to reinvent himself by volunteering to fight in Ukraine but was rejected.
He said that he was neither a Republican nor a Democrat and that he voted for Trump in 2016 but later regretted that decision.
During jury selection, Routh tried to discern the political leanings of prospective jurors, and later those of witnesses, but Cannon cut off most of those questions as improper.
In pretrial motions, Routh said he considered his case to be about “preserving democracy and freedom.” He proposed a prisoner swap “for a female protester in Iran … or to freeze to death in Siberia in exchange for a Ukrainian soldier so that I could die being of some use.”
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Trump celebrated the verdict on X.
“This was an evil man with an evil intention, and they caught him,” Trump said in his post.
The president congratulated Secret Service agents and other law enforcement officers for their work on the case, as well as the witness who took down Routh’s license plate number. “What incredible instinct and foresight this person had — A very big moment for JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” Trump wrote.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on X that the verdict “illustrates the Department of Justice’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.
[SRC] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/23/ryan-routh-guilty-verdict/
