The man accused of aiming a rifle at Donald Trump on Sunday made his first appearance in federal court Monday.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, is charged with two federal firearms offenses and faces up to 20 years in prison. Neither charge alludes to the assassination attempt authorities say they foiled when they spotted Routh at Trump International Golf Club, crouched in a bush and aiming a semi-automatic rifle toward the former president.
The West Palm Post reports the first charge, felony possession of a firearm, carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in federal prison. The second, possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number, is punishable by up to five years. Both charges carry a maximum three-year period of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.
According to his criminal complaint, Routh waited in the vicinity of the golf course from about 2 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Sunday. Secret Service agents who walked the golf course ahead of Trump on Sunday spotted a gun barrel in the bushes and opened fire. Routh then fled in a black Nissan SUV, leaving behind a loaded assault rifle, a backpack, two bags, a digital camera and some food.
The criminal complaint did not detail how Routh, whose last known address was in Hawaii, arrived in Palm Beach County, or where he obtained his weapons.
Also on Monday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump pointed to “the rhetoric of [Joe] Biden and [Kamala] Harris” as responsible for the second apparent assassination attempt against him at his Florida golf club in an interview with Fox News Digital on Monday.
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out,” Trump said in the interview, without citing specific evidence.
Harris and Biden both released statements condemning political violence on Sunday.
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