Ryan Routh, accused of hiding in the bushes of a Florida Golf course with a semi-automatic rifle to try to assassinate Donald Trump is set to be sentenced.
The incident happened less than two months before the 2024 U.S. election that returned Trump to the presidency.
Prosecutors have asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to sentence Routh to life in prison during the hearing in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Routh, 59, was convicted by a jury in Sept. 2025 of five criminal counts including attempted assassination after serving as his own defence lawyer at trial.
Prosecutors said, in a court filing, that Routh’s crimes “undeniably warrant a life sentence” because he had plotted the assassination for months, was willing to kill anybody who got in the way and has expressed neither regret nor remorse.
Routh has asked the judge to impose a 27-year term.
In a court filing, Routh denied that he intended to kill Trump, and said he was willing to undergo psychological treatment for a personality disorder in prison.
He suggested that the jurors were misled about the facts of the case by his inability to mount a proper legal defence at trial.
Routh, who at the time of his arrest had resided most recently in Hawaii after previously living in North Carolina, was also convicted of three illegal firearm possession charges and one-count of impeding a federal officer during his arrest.
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Secret Service agents spotted Routh hiding in bushes a few hundred yards (meters) from where Trump was golfing at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach on Sept. 15, 2024.
Routh fled the scene and left behind an assault-style rifle but was later arrested.
Prosecutors said Routh arrived in South Florida about a month before the incident, staying at a truck stop and tracking Trump’s movements and schedule.
“He carried six cell phones and used fake names to conceal his identity, according to trial evidence; he lay in wait in thick bushes for nearly 10 hours on the day of the incident.
“Investigators on the scene found the assault-style rifle, two bags containing body armor-like metal plates and a video camera pointed at the golf course,” the prosecutors said.
Routh pleaded not guilty in the case but fired his lawyers and opted to represent himself at trial despite lacking any formal legal training.
His meandering opening statement touched on topics including the origin of the human species and the settlement of the American West before he was cut off by Cannon, who warned him against making a mockery of the courtroom.
Routh’s defence strategy focused on what he described as his nonviolent nature, but he offered little pushback as a parade of law enforcement witnesses detailed the evidence in the case.
Prosecutor John Shipley told jurors that Routh’s plot was “carefully crafted and deadly serious,” adding that without the Secret Service’s intervention “Donald Trump would not be alive.”
After the jury read the verdict, Routh appeared to try to stab himself with a pen several times and had to be restrained by U.S. marshals.
His daughter yelled in court that her father had not hurt anyone and that she would get him out of prison.
Trump lauded the verdict in a post on his Truth Social site, saying, “This was an evil man with an evil intention, and they caught him.”
Reuters/NAN
