A federal jury convicted Ryan Wesley Routh today of trying to assassinate President Trump a little more than a year ago at Trump’s International Golf Club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The 59-year-old attempted assassin will face years if not life in prison. The jury convicted him of attempting to assassinate Trump, assaulting a federal officer, and three other crimes.
The verdict came after a prosecution that detailed his plan to murder Trump. After Routh heard the verdict, he apparently attempted suicide in the courtroom.
The trial revealed that Secret Service Special Agent Robert Fercano spotted Routh from his sniper’s lair, pointing an SKS rifle at the agent. Fercano fired on Routh, who fled the scene.
At the site of Routh’s attempted shooting, authorities found the loaded rifle, which was equipped with a scope. The safety was off. Also found was a magazine containing 19 rounds and “steel armor plates, and a camera attached to the fence pointing toward the sixth hole green of the golf course, where Routh had been hiding,” the Justice Department release on the verdict recounted.
Authorities later caught Routh heading northbound on Interstate 95 in a Nissan Xterra.
“A search of Routh’s Nissan Xterra found numerous mobile phones, and a list of flights out of the country in the afternoon and evening of Sept. 15, 2024 — the day of the attempted assassination — along with directions to Miami International Airport,” DOJ continued:
Cell records for two of the cell phones found in the Nissan Xterra showed that on multiple days and times from Aug. 18 to Sept. 15, Routh’s cell phone accessed cell towers located near Trump International and the President’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.
A witness testified that Routh left a box at the witness’ residence that contained a confessional letter.
“Dear World,” it began. “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I am so sorry. I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to whomever can complete the job.”
Prosecutors said Routh reconnoitered the golf course 17 times, Fox News reported.
Routh lay in wait for Trump for some 12 hours, starting at 2:00 that morning.
Routh was convicted of the following crimes:
Routh tried to stab himself in the neck with a pen after he heard the verdict, Fox reported, and his daughter shouted that he was innocent.
“Don’t do anything,” she said. “I will get you out. What the f***, f***, he didn’t hurt anybody. This is not fair. This is all rigged — you guys are a**holes.”
The second attempt on Trump’s life after his near assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 — two months before Routh tried to murder the president — was yet another strike against the Secret Service.
Then Acting Director Ronald Rowe told reporters that the agency did not sweep the perimeter of the golf course because Trump wasn’t scheduled to play.
That raises the question of how Routh knew Trump would be at the course that day.
Routh must have known something, having stationed himself to shoot Trump as he approached, was on, or walked off the sixth green. As well, again, Routh lay in ambuscade for Trump for 12 hours.
“How many times did your agents go around the perimeter and scope out the golf course during the 12 hours that this guy was holed up in the shrubbery?” a reporter asked Rowe.
Replied Rowe:
So we, this was an off the record movement. It wasn’t a site that was on his schedule, it wasn’t part of his schedule. So there was no posting up of it because he wasn’t supposed to have gone there in the first place.
But that wasn’t the first time the Secret Service didn’t secure the perimeter of an area where Trump would be.
The agency left perimeter security in Butler to local authorities.
Indeed, the attempt in Butler, where deceased attempted assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks winged Trump’s right ear, was a litany of security failures. Secret Service agents encountered Crooks hours before he shot Trump, and did not station an agent on the roof from which Crooks fired because it was too steep.
That claim from then Director Kimberly Cheatle invited richly deserved ridicule.
Video showed Crooks’s sprint on the roof to set up for the shot at Trump. Local police spotted Crooks on the roof 30 minutes before he fired.
The near-disastrous day led to Cheatle’s resignation. She landed the top spot because she was gal pals with former First Lady Jill Biden. One of Cheatle’s top priorities at the agency was ensuring that women held 30 percent of the agency’s jobs by 2030.