The man convicted of attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump on a Florida golf course last year tried to stab himself in the neck with a pen in the courtroom after the jury’s guilty verdicts on Tuesday.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 59, a building contractor from North Carolina, was arrested in September 2024 after a Secret Service agent spotted him “pointing an AK-style rifle” at a federal agent at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Routh was charged with the attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, assaulting a federal officer and weapons violations. A 12-member jury found him guilty on all five counts, two of which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
“Make no mistake: The defendant was going to kill Donald Trump,” Christopher B. Browne, one of the federal prosecutors, said during his closing argument. “The defendant was just one bullet away.”