Trial underway for Ryan Wesley Routh, man accused of Trump assassination attempt

The trial of Ryan Wesley Routh, the man accused of attempting to gun down Donald Trump on his golf course, is scheduled to begin on Monday.

FORT PIERCE, Fla. — The trial of a man accused of attempting to gun down Donald Trump on his golf course is scheduled to begin Monday, nearly a year after a Secret Service agent rousted the suspect from a hiding place at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.

Ryan Wesley Routh, a 59-year-old Hawaii resident and former Trump supporter, will be representing himself when jury selection gets underway at the federal court in Fort Pierce, which is part of the Southern District of Florida.

Ryan Routh during a rally in Mariupol, Ukraine, on May 17, 2022.Valentyn Ogirenko / Reuters U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, called Routh’s bid to serve as his own lawyer a “bad idea” when he first requested it in July.

But Routh insisted he and his attorneys were “a million miles apart,” and his court-appointed public defenders agreed, stating the relationship with Routh was “irreconcilably broken.”

So Cannon has ordered that the defenders remain in the courtroom on standby as the prosecutors and Routh himself begin choosing potential jurors out of a pool of 180 people from the surrounding area.