Ryan Wesley Routh

Ryan Wesley Routh was convicted by a federal jury in Fort Pierce, Florida on September 23, 2025 of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, then a major presidential candidate, and of four related offenses arising from the same episode. He was sentenced on February 4, 2026 to life imprisonment.

The September 15, 2024 Incident

According to the government’s written proffer in support of pretrial detention, Trump was golfing at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach on September 15, 2024. A Secret Service agent conducting a security sweep ahead of him rode along the chain-link fence separating the 6th hole from Congress Avenue and Summit Boulevard. At about 1:30 p.m. the agent saw a partially obscured face in the brush along the fence line and a rifle barrel protruding through the fence; he drew his weapon and fired. Trump was on the 5th hole and was removed from the area by his detail. When the agent looked up again the man was gone.

A civilian witness saw a man run across Summit Boulevard to a black Nissan Xterra and drive off, and recorded most of the licence plate. The Martin County Sheriff’s Office stopped the vehicle on I-95 at about 2:15 p.m. with Routh as its sole occupant, and the witness identified him at the scene.

The proffer states that agents recovered an SKS semiautomatic 7.62x39 rifle with a scope and extended magazine, loaded with eleven rounds and one in the chamber, its serial number obliterated; a backpack and shopping bag containing plates that preliminary ballistics testing showed were capable of stopping small arms fire; six cellphones and two spare licence plates in the vehicle, one phone carrying a search for how to travel from Palm Beach County to Mexico; a handwritten list of dates and venues where Trump had appeared or was expected; and a notebook of names, phone numbers and notes concerning Ukraine.

Charges, Trial and Verdict

Routh was charged by criminal complaint on September 16, 2024 with two firearms offenses only — possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. A grand jury returned a five-count indictment on September 24, 2024:

1. Attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, 18 U.S.C. § 351(c)
2. Possessing and brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(ii)
3. Assaulting a federal officer with a deadly and dangerous weapon, 18 U.S.C. §§ 111(a)(1) and (b) — the government identified the officer as Secret Service Agent Robert Fercano
4. Felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)
5. Possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number, 18 U.S.C. § 922(k)

The case was assigned to Judge Aileen M. Cannon. Routh was arraigned on September 30, 2024 and ordered detained pending trial. In May 2025 the court denied his motion to dismiss Counts 4 and 5 on Second Amendment grounds.

Represented by the Federal Public Defender through most of pre-trial proceedings, Routh moved to waive appointed counsel; after colloquies on July 10 and July 24, 2025 the court authorized him to represent himself and appointed his former attorneys as standby counsel. Trial began on September 8, 2025. The court denied a Rule 29 motion for judgment of acquittal at the close of the government’s case. On September 23, 2025, the twelfth day of trial, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty on all five counts.

Sentence and Appeal

The court reappointed counsel for sentencing in November 2025. The Presentence Investigation Report calculated an advisory Guidelines range of life imprisonment, applying the official-victim adjustment under USSG §3A1.2 and the terrorism enhancement under USSG §3A1.4; the government’s sentencing memorandum records that Routh did not dispute that the range was life but asked the court to vary downward to 27 years.

At the February 4, 2026 hearing the court overruled the objections to the report, denied the variance motion and imposed life imprisonment on Count 1, 240 months on Count 3, 180 months on Count 4 and 60 months on Count 5, all concurrent with one another and consecutive to 84 months on Count 2, followed by three years of supervised release on each count running concurrently, with a $500 special assessment. Restitution was deferred to a later hearing. Judgment was entered February 5, 2026.

Routh filed a notice of appeal, docketed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on February 13, 2026 as No. 26-10504. The appeal remained pending as of September 1, 2026.

Prior Record and Stated Motive

The government’s detention proffer states that Routh was convicted in Greensboro, North Carolina on or about December 20, 2002 of possession of a weapon of mass death and destruction — described as a binary explosive device — a class F felony under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-288.8, and on or about March 3, 2010 of multiple counts of possession of stolen goods, a class H felony. These convictions are the predicate for Count 4.

On motive, this page relies only on documents Routh is alleged to have written and that were placed in the record. The proffer describes a handwritten letter addressed “To The World,” found in a box he had left at a civilian witness’s residence, which stated in part: “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but 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 $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.” The same letter stated that Trump “ended relations with Iran like a child and now the Middle East has unraveled.” The proffer also quotes a February 2023 self-published book attributed to Routh, “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” in which he wrote that readers were “free to assassinate Trump as well as me” over the dismantling of the Iran agreement.

What Is Not Established Here

This page previously said only that Routh had been “charged with attempted assassination.” That was accurate when written but had become badly out of date: he was tried, convicted on all five counts on September 23, 2025, and sentenced to life imprisonment on February 4, 2026. Charge, verdict and sentence are stated separately above so the three are not collapsed.

Several things commonly reported about Routh are not asserted here because no primary record checked in this audit supports them: his date or year of birth, his residence and occupations, his travel to Ukraine or any recruitment activity there beyond the notebook found in his vehicle and the title of his self-published book, his voter registration or political donations, and any psychiatric diagnosis. No birthYear, affiliations, primaryPlatforms or image is claimed for that reason.

Separate charges brought by Florida state prosecutors were widely reported in September 2024. State court dockets are not carried by CourtListener and no state record was retrieved, so nothing about a state case — its counts, or whether it remains pending — is stated here.

The narrative of months of planning, the sniper hide, the Butler, Pennsylvania trigger, the purchase of the rifle and the surveillance of Trump’s movements comes from the government’s sentencing memorandum and its account of the trial evidence, and is attributed to the government rather than stated in this project’s voice. The trial transcripts themselves were not retrieved. The judgment itself (ECF 397) was not available as a document through RECAP; its terms are taken from the docket text of the judgment entry and the sentencing minute entry, which recite them in full and agree with each other.