Man Who Staked Out Trump at Florida Golf Course Charged With Attempting an Assassination

TOPSHOT – This screengrab taken from AFPTV on September 16, 2024 shows Ryan Wesley Routh speaking during an interview at a rally to urge foreign leaders and international organisations to help provide humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians and Ukrainian servicemen from Mariupol in central Kyiv on April 27, 2022, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. US media said it was Routh, 58, who was arrested after US Secret Service agents “opened fire on a gunman” carrying an AK-47 style rifle near the boundary of Donald Trump’s Florida golf course where the former president was golfing on September 15, 2024. (Photo by AFPTV / AFP) (Photo by -/AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A man who authorities say staked out Donald Trump for 12 hours on his golf course in Florida and wrote of his desire to kill him has been indicted on charges that he attempted to assassinate the former president. Ryan Wesley Routh had been initially charged with two federal firearms offenses. The upgraded charges reflect the Justice Department’s assessment that he methodically plotted to kill the Republican nominee, aiming a rifle through the shrubbery surrounding Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course on an afternoon Trump was playing on it. Routh left behind a note in which he described his intention.