A man involved in an apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump over the weekend appeared in federal court in Florida on Monday and is facing federal gun charges.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, appeared in prison scrubs and shackles at a federal courthouse in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Routh is charged with possessing a firearm despite being a convicted felon and possessing a firearm with a destroyed serial number, according to charging documents . He will be detained without bond until at least Sept. 23, when the court scheduled a detention hearing. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Authorities say Routh waited in the bushes, armed with a semiautomatic rifle, with the apparent plan to shoot Trump on Sunday while the former president was playing golf a few hundred yards away at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
A Secret Service special agent in charge who was providing security for Trump that day spotted Routh's rifle "poking out of the tree line" and immediately began firing shots at Routh, according to an FBI agent's affidavit. Trump was unharmed during the incident.
The suspect fled the scene, and in less than an hour, law enforcement officials located Routh driving down the highway in a vehicle with a license plate that was registered to a stolen truck, the FBI agent said.
Cellphone data retrieved by the FBI showed that Routh lingered in the golf course vicinity for 12 hours, from about 2 a.m. until the incident occurred at 1:31 p.m.
An abundance of details about Routh and his probable motive emerged soon after the incident.
The suspect appeared to be a political ideologue with a large social media presence who became disenchanted with Trump after 2016. Routh appeared to shift his favor toward various Democrats in recent years and developed a fixation on supporting Ukraine in 2022.
Routh wrote a digital book called Ukraine's Unwinnable War, which became available on Amazon in 2023. In it, Routh repeatedly criticized Trump and expressed a desire for him to be assassinated.
"I must take part of the blame for the retarded child that we elected for our next president that ended up being brain-less, but I am man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake and Iran I apologize," Routh wrote. "You are free to assassinate Trump as well as me for that error in judgement and the dismantling of the [Iran nuclear] deal."
Routh also wrote that "no one here in the US seems to have the balls to put natural selection to work or even unnatural selection."
He described Trump at times as an "idiot" and a "fool" and wrote that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was an incident "perpetuated by Donald Trump and his undemocratic posse."
Routh was also active on X, posting frequently before his account was suspended. In one now-unavailable X post, Routh said he voted for Trump in 2016 but that the former president seems to be "getting worse and devolving."
In another, he encouraged Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran in the Republican presidential primary, to "partner now to change the course of this election."
Routh's LinkedIn page states that he lived in North Carolina before moving to Hawaii, where he owns a construction business. North Carolina Department of Corrections records show Routh has an extensive criminal record, including a felony count of possessing a weapon of mass destruction. In North Carolina, that could mean a bomb, an automatic firearm, or a number of other devices.
Routh donated small-dollar amounts to Democrats in 2019 and 2020, according to Federal Election Commission records. Recipients of his donations included Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), former Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke, and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who at the time identified as a Democrat but has since renounced her party and endorsed Trump.
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The FBI, which is leading the inquiry into Routh, announced after the incident on Sunday that it was investigating "what appears to be an attempted assassination" of Trump.
The incident marks the second attempt on Trump's life since July. The first one, carried out by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks at a rally in Pennsylvania, caused one death, two injuries, and a minor injury to Trump's ear.
The FBI found that Crooks had no clear ideology or motive, only that he searched the internet in the months before the rally for information about various public officials, Trump's and President Joe Biden's planned events, a mass shooting, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
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