{"id":199288,"date":"2026-02-05T09:23:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T09:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ryan-routh-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-trump-golf-course-assassination-attempt-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T09:23:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T09:23:05","slug":"ryan-routh-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-trump-golf-course-assassination-attempt-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ryan-routh-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-trump-golf-course-assassination-attempt-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Routh sentenced to life in prison for Trump golf course assassination attempt – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

news Alerts
There are no new alerts at this time
FORT PIERCE, Fla. \u2014 Ryan Routh was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday in federal court after he was found guilty<\/a> last year of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon handed down the sentence, plus a mandatory additional seven years for a firearm offense, for Routh, who was convicted of trying to kill Trump, then a presidential candidate, at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach in September 2024.
Cannon harshly rebuked Routh, calling his assassination plot “evil.”
“It is clear to me, Mr. Routh, that life imprisonment is reasonable,” Cannon said Thursday. “Despite the evil, there is a sliver of good. … We see the courage of good Americans … in Agent Fercano,” referring to Secret Service agent Robert Fercano, who spotted Routh hiding in the shrubbery near the fifth hole of Trump\u2019s golf club.
Routh also addressed the court Wednesday, calling his sentence “unimportant” in a long speech that Cannon eventually cut off.
“America stands on human rights,” Routh said, saying that \u201charming someone is totally wrong” and “we need to care for our fellow man.”
Prosecutors had been asking for a life sentence, writing in a sentencing memorandum that he \u201cremains totally unrepentant\u201d and that \u201cthe heinous nature of this assassination attempt \u2014 his selfish, violent decision to prevent the American voters from electing President Trump by killing him first \u2014 that warrants severe criminal punishment.\u201d
“To this day, he has not expressed remorse or regret,” prosecutor John Shipley said at the hearing, arguing that Routh “intended a cold-blooded killing” to “upend democracy.”
Shipley added: \u201cIt is not American or democratic to settle a political grievance with a bullet.\u201d
Routh, who represented himself during the trial, was assigned a court-appointed attorney to help him prepare for his sentencing hearing.
The attorney, Martin Roth, argued in a court document last month that Routh did not \u201ccommit an act of terrorism\u201d and asked Cannon to issue a \u201cterm of 20 years, followed by the required 7-year mandatory sentence\u201d for his firearm conviction in relation to the assassination attempt. Routh would \u201cbe in custody into his eighties and would not pose any threat to cause harm to the public,” Roth said.
Roth argued Wednesday that his client “decided not to pull the trigger” and that he “has always tried to do important things.”
“He\u2019s a complex person, I\u2019ll give the court that, but he has a good core,” Roth added.
Routh was arrested in September 2024. According to prosecutors, he was waiting for Trump to get into his line of fire.
Friends and relatives submitted letters of support to the court.
Routh\u2019s son Adam wrote that his father \u201cwants to move forward in the right way and continue to be someone who contributes to our family and his community\u201d and added that \u201cwe still need him, and he still has people who love and support him.\u201d
Nancy Meyers, Routh\u2019s sister, asked Cannon to consider placing her brother in a prison facility in North Carolina, saying the family was “devastated” by his actions but “committed to assisting him with his rehabilitative efforts.\u201d
Wednesday’s hearing was the first time Routh had been back in court since he tried to stab himself in the neck with his pen<\/a> after his guilty verdict was read last year. U.S. marshals quickly escorted him out of the courtroom.
During the closing of the two-week trial, Routh delivered a brief and disjointed argument in which he tried to argue that there was no crime because he never fired a shot at Trump. Routh brought up the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill and began talking about Ukraine, Founding Father Patrick Henry and the \u201ccommon man,\u201d before Cannon put a halt to his argument.
After just over two hours of deliberations, the jury of seven women and five men found Routh guilty on all five counts, which included three federal gun charges and an assault on the Secret Service agent who rousted him from his hiding place.
Routh underwent a medical evaluation before the trial. In its sentencing memorandum, the government wrote that a private psychiatrist retained by Routh’s former counsel “ultimately acknowledged that Routh had no basis to claim incompetence, insanity, or diminished capacity, but did propose that Routh suffers from two disorders [Narcissistic Personality Disorder and a Bipolar II diagnosis].\u201d
The government said Routh made no effort to explain how the supposed conditions related to his crimes or how they excused his criminal conduct.
Routh’s attorney asked that his client receive mental health treatment while he is in custody after he is sentenced.
Juliette Arcodia is a producer for NBC News’ Southern Region.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeFORT PIERCE, Fla. \u2014 Ryan Routh was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday in federal court after he was found guilty last year of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon handed down the sentence, plus a mandatory additional seven years for a firearm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":199289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-199288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}