Man who tried to shoot Trump at Florida golf course gets life in prison

A man convicted of trying to assassinate President Donald Trump at a Florida golf course in 2024 was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026, after a federal prosecutor said his crime was unacceptable “in this country or anywhere.”

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon announced Ryan Routh’s fate in September as chaos descended into a Fort Pierce courtroom where he tried to stab himself shortly after jurors found him guilty on all counts.

“American democracy doesn’t work when individuals take it into their own hands to screen candidates. That’s what this person was trying to do,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Shipley told the judge. he said.

Defense attorney Martin L. Roth argued that “at the moment of fact he chose not to pull the trigger.”

The judge pushed back, noting Routh’s arrest history, to which Mr Roth said: “He’s a complex person, I’ll take that to court, but he’s got a very good core.”

Routh then read a rambling 20-page statement. Ms. Cannon came in, told him that nothing he said was relevant, and gave him five more minutes to speak.

“I did everything I could and I lived a good life,” Routh said before the judge interrupted him.

“Your plan to kill was deliberate and evil,” he said. “You are not a peaceful man. You are not a good man.”

He later handed down his sentence: Life without parole plus seven years on the weapons charge. The sentences for his other three crimes will be imposed concurrently.

In a statement on social platform X, U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi thanked prosecutors for ensuring Routh “never walked free again.”

“Ryan Routh’s heinous assassination attempt on President Trump was not only an attack on our President, it was a direct attack on our entire democratic system,” Mr. Bondi said.

Routh’s sentencing was originally scheduled for December. But Ms. Cannon agreed to withdraw the case after Routh decided to retain a lawyer at the sentencing stage rather than represent himself as he did for most of the trial.

Routh was convicted of trying to assassinate a leading presidential candidate, using a firearm in furtherance of a crime, assaulting a federal officer, criminal possession of a firearm, and using a gun with a defaced serial number.

“Routh has shown no remorse for his crimes, has never apologized for the lives he risked, and his life demonstrates an almost complete disregard for the law,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing brief. he said.

The defense attorney had asked for a sentence of 20 years plus the mandatory seven years for the weapons charge.

“The defendant is two weeks away from turning sixty,” Mr. Roth wrote in a filing. “A just sentence provides for a sentence long enough to provide an adequate but not excessive sentence, allowing the defendant to experience freedom again rather than dying in prison.”

Prosecutors said Routh plotted for weeks to kill Mr. Trump before pointing his rifle through bushes while the Republican presidential candidate was playing golf at a West Palm Beach country club on Sept. 15, 2024.

At the hearing, a Secret Service agent who helped protect Mr. Trump on the golf course testified that he saw Routh before Mr. Trump came into view. Routh pointed his rifle at the agent who opened fire, causing Routh to drop his gun and flee without firing a single bullet.

In the motion seeking a lawyer, Routh offered to exchange his life for people wrongfully held in other countries, an offer he said was still valid for Mr. Trump to “take out his frustrations on me.”

“If we had been just a quarter inch further back, we wouldn’t have had to deal with this whole mess,” Routh wrote. He added: “But I always fail at everything (par for the course).”