Ryan Routh indicted on 5 federal counts for the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump

Ryan Wesley Routh was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami late Sept. 24 on five counts related to the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump at his Florida golf club on Sept. 15.

The indictment includes charges of attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, assaulting a federal officer, possession of a firearm and ammunition by a felon, and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

Routh, 58, of Greensboro, North Carolina, and Kaaawa, Hawaii, faces up to life in prison if convicted of the attempted assassination charge. The other counts carry prison terms of five to 20 years each.

At a federal court hearing Sept. 23 in West Palm Beach, a magistrate judge ordered Routh detained pending trial on the two firearms charges.

The criminal case based on the indictment was randomly assigned to U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who recently dismissed the classified documents case brought against Trump by the Department of Justice.

'In our country, we have to hold accountable people who resort to violence.'

The indictment identified the federal officer who was assaulted during the incident as “Secret Service Special Agent #1.” Routh is accused of pointing an AK-47 rifle at the agent from outside the fence near the sixth green at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Trump was playing the fifth hole at the time.

“Violence targeting public officials endangers everything our country stands for, and the Department of Justice will use every available tool to hold Ryan Routh accountable for the attempted assassination of former President Trump charged in the indictment,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

“Routh is charged with attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, which strikes at the very heart of our democratic system,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

“The FBI is continuing our investigation into this alleged plot and will use the full weight and resources of the FBI to uncover and provide as much information as possible about what led to the events in West Palm Beach,” Wray said. “In our country, we have to hold accountable people who resort to violence.”

Routh was charged in an earlier federal criminal complaint with the two firearms violations, which were wrapped into the indictment.

Federal prosecutors filed notice that upon conviction, Routh would forfeit any assets traceable to the assassination attempt, including “any property, real or personal, which constitutes or is derived from proceeds traceable to such offense,” the indictment said.

About 1:30 p.m. Sept. 15, a Secret Service agent doing a perimeter sweep of the golf course “saw the partially obscured face of a man — later identified as Routh — in the brush along the fence line near the sixth hole,” the DOJ said in a news release. The agent fired at Routh when he saw a rifle aimed at him through the chain-link fence.

Routh reportedly fled the scene in a black Nissan Xterra. A witness who saw Routh running across the road took photographs of the vehicle and license plate. Routh was pulled over about 45 minutes later on Interstate 95 by deputies from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.

Agents searching the fence line at Trump International found a sniper’s nest with an AK-47 rifle outfitted with a scope and extended magazine. A backpack and a reusable shopping bag hanging on the fence each contained “a plate capable of stopping small arms fire,” the DOJ said in a news release.

In a Sept. 23 court filing, prosecutors released an undated, handwritten letter allegedly from Routh that predicted he would fail at assassinating the former president and offered $150,000 to “whomever can complete the job.” The letter was in a box that prosecutors said Routh dropped off “several months prior” at the residence of a person they described only as a “civilian witness.”

Prosecutors said Routh traveled from Greensboro to West Palm Beach on Aug. 14. On “multiple days and times” between Aug. 18 and Sept. 15, Routh’s cell phone accessed towers near Trump International Golf Club and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Routh apparently arrived at the fence line location where he made his sniper’s nest about 12 hours before he was fired upon by the Secret Service.

During a search of the Nissan Xterra, FBI agents found six cell phones, 12 pairs of gloves, Routh’s Hawaii driver’s license, a U.S. passport, and a handwritten list of dates and locations where Trump had appeared or was scheduled to appear in August, September, and October. One of the cell phones had a Google search on how to travel from Palm Beach County to Mexico, the FBI said.

Routh, who spent much of the past two years as a mercenary recruiting men to join the Ukraine military in its war against Russia, has an extensive North Carolina criminal record dating to the mid-1980s. He was convicted in 2002 of possessing an explosive device referred to in court papers as a “weapon of mass death.” His prison sentence in that case was stayed, and he was given probation.

Routh’s son, Oran Alexander Routh, 35, was charged in a federal criminal complaint Sept. 23 with one count of possession of child pornography and one count of receiving child pornography. The FBI said it found pornographic images on the younger Routh’s phone during a search of his Greensboro residence as part of the attempted assassination investigation of his father.

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