U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon sentenced Ryan Routh on Wednesday to life in prison for trying to assassinate Donald Trump when he was running for president in 2024, the Associated Press reported.
Federal prosecutors had urged the Trump-appointed judge to impose a life sentence on Routh to “send a message that seeking to assassinate a Presidential candidate will result in the most severe punishment.” Arguing that his crimes “undeniably warrant a life sentence,” they said in a memo ahead of sentencing that he planned the attempted assassination for months, showed his willingness to kill anyone who got in the way and expressed no remorse.
Prosecutors said that Routh “plotted painstakingly to kill President Trump, and took significant steps toward making that happen, culminating on September 15, 2024 at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, when he sat in a sniper hide that he had carefully constructed, chambered a round in the military-grade SKS rifle that he possessed illegally, and pointed it toward President Trump and his protective detail.”
He was only thwarted, they said, “by a Secret Service agent who noticed and disrupted Routh before Routh could fire a shot.”
Cannon, who dismissed Trump’s classified documents case in July 2024, rejected Routh’s motion for her recusal when he was charged that fall.
“Mr. Trump is the current Republican candidate for President in next month’s election,” Routh’s lawyers at the time wrote to Cannon in October 2024. “On the campaign trail, he has repeatedly praised Your Honor for her rulings in his case. As the alleged victim here, he has a significant stake in the outcome of this case too. Were he to become President in the future, he would have authority to nominate Your Honor to a federal judgeship on a higher court were a vacancy to arise,” they wrote.
The judge said she saw “no proper basis for recusal.”
Routh represented himself at trial in September, where he was found guilty of all counts in his indictment, including attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate.
After the verdict was read and with some jurors still in the courtroom, Routh “attempted to inflict harm on himself by puncturing his neck with a pen before deputy marshals were able to intervene quickly and prevent harm,” Cannon wrote in recounting the proceedings as she begrudgingly appointed a new lawyer to help him with his sentencing.
She wrote that Routh had made “a mockery of this proceeding since he elected to go pro se,” noting that he had invited “a courtroom fight” with Trump; made “various inappropriate requests about trading his life in a prisoner swap”; and, apparently referring to his post-verdict stabbing attempt, said that “just a quarter of an inch further back and we all would not have to deal with all of this mess forwards.”
Represented by counsel, Routh asked for a 27-year sentence. That would be “sufficient to meet the need for punishment, provide the defendant with correctional treatment and provide for mental health treatment in a custodial setting,” lawyer Martin Roth argued on Routh’s behalf in a filing ahead of sentencing. Noting that the defendant was approaching his 60th birthday, he said that by the end of a 27-year term, Routh will have been incarcerated “into his eighties and would not pose any threat to cause harm to the public.”
In that filing, the defense conceded the gravity of the crimes of which Routh was convicted but said “this was an unsuccessful attempt that caused no harm to the presidential candidate, his staff or to Secret Service agents.”
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