Ryan Routh, 59, was arrested and accused of conspiring to shoot Trump, then candidate for the presidency, while playing Golf in one of his fields in Palm Beach, two months after the Republican was injured in one ear for a shot during a campaign rally in the state of Pennsylvania.
Routh, resident in Hawaii, was tried in Florida for the positions of murder of a presidential candidate, aggression to a federal agent and crimes related to firearms.
The jury declared Routh guilty of, among others, the crime of attempted murder of a presidency candidate, for which he could be sentenced to the life imprisonment.
The conviction will be issued on December 18.
Trump reacts
After reading the verdict in a federal court in Florida, in the southeast of the United States, Routh tried to stick a pen on the neck, but the guards intervened to prevent itFox News and NBC reported.
“A great moment for justice in the United States,” President Donald Trump wrote in Truth Social.
Trump congratulated the United States Attorney General PAM Bondi, and official of the Department of Justice for ensuring the conviction.
“This was an evil man with an evil intention, and they caught him,” the US president wrote in his social network Truth.
The Secretary of Justice, Pam Bondi, stressed in X that the verdict “illustrates the commitment of the Department of Justice to punish all those who are dedicated to political violence.”
He said in a statement that this “murder attempt was not only an attack on our president, but an affront to our own nation.”
Ryan Routh was also prosecuted for illegal possession of arms due to his criminal record, possession of a weapon with the serial number, possession of firearms in order to commit a violent crime and aggression to a federal agent.
THE GOLF FIELD
Born in Hawaii, Routh was arrested after an agent of the Secret Service saw the barrel of a rifle protruding from the bushes in the perimeter of the West Palm Beach golf course where Trump was playing. The agent opened fire. Routh fled in a vehicle, but was arrested shortly after.
The authorities recovered at that time an AK style rifle with telescopic sight and an additional loader.
During the trial, in which Routh represented himself, a witness declared that the defendant left a box in his residence that included a handwritten letter that said: “Dear world. This was an attempt to murder of Donald Trump, but I regret a lot to have failed them.”
Routh has an obsession with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and, according to reports, traveled to kyiv in an attempt to join groups of foreign volunteers before being rejected due to their age and lack of experience.
According to judicial documents, months before his arrest, the detainee left a box with several letters at the home of an unidentified person.
One of them, aimed at the “world,” said: “This was an attempt to murder against Donald Trump, but I’m very sorry to have failed them.”
“I did my best and put all my efforts,” he added. “Now it is up to you to finish the job; and I will offer $ 150,000 who can complete it.”
The cell phone records cited by the Department of Justice indicate that Routh traveled from Greensboro to West Palm Beach in mid-August, and that he was near the Trump golf course and his Mar-A-Lago mansion “on several dates, several hours” between August 18 and the day of the murder attempt.
Second attempt
Routh’s was the second murder attempt against Trump, then a White House candidate, last year.
The first took place on July 13 in an electoral rally in Butler (Pennsylvania), when an armed man opened fire, killing a person and hurting Trump in his ear.
The armed man was killed in the place of facts.
