Ryan Wesley Routh stalked the US president with a rifle during his 2024 campaign
A screen grab shows police forces arresting Ryan Wesley Routh in Florida. September 16, 2024. © Getty Images
[RT] A
US federal court has sentenced Ryan Wesley Routh to life in prison for
attempting to assassinate Donald Trump at his Florida golf resort in
2024. Prosecutors said Routh, who was reportedly obsessed with the
Ukraine conflict, had stalked the then-US presidential candidate while
armed with a rifle.
US District Judge Aileen M. Cannon in Fort
Pierce, Florida, imposed a sentence of life plus 84 months following
Routh’s conviction by a federal jury on all five counts in the
indictment, the Justice Department said on Wednesday. The charges
included attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate,
assault on a federal officer, and multiple firearms offenses.
“Ryan Routh’s heinous attempted assassination of President Trump was not only an attack on our president – it was a direct assault against our entire democratic system,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
Prosecutors said Routh, 59, conducted surveillance and waited for
hours in dense bushes outside Trump’s West Palm Beach resort while
positioning a scoped semi-automatic rifle through a fence line. A Secret
Service agent spotted the weapon and opened fire, forcing Routh to flee
before Trump came into view. He was later arrested on a nearby highway.
During his trial, Routh chose for a time to represent himself,
delivering rambling courtroom statements – which mentioned Adolf Hitler,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Russian President
Vladimir Putin – before a judge curtailed them. After the jury returned
guilty verdicts, he attempted to stab himself with a pen.
Prior to
his assassination attempt, Routh had been fixated on the Ukraine
conflict. Multiple outlets reported that he traveled to the country and
sought to recruit foreign Afghans, who had fled the Taliban, for the
Ukrainian cause. He also publicly advocated the assassination of Putin.
The New York Times pointed to his “penchant for violent rhetoric,” citing an X post by Routh in which he said he was willing to “go to the border of Ukraine to volunteer and fight and die.”
Routh
stalked Trump several weeks after the US president was targeted in an
assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Thomas Matthew
Crooks opened fire at a rally, grazing Trump’s ear with a bullet and
killing one spectator before being shot dead by a Secret Service detail.