Ryan Routh, the suspect in the second alleged assassination attempt against President Trump, has formally requested that a judge suppress statements from an eyewitness who identified him to police as the suspect with a high-powered rifle who was a few hundred yards away from Mr. Trump at his Florida golf course.
Prosecutors say Routh planned to kill Mr. Trump for weeks before aiming a rifle through the shrubbery while the then-Republican nominee was playing golf at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach on September 14, 2024. Routh fled before Mr. Trump arrived, according to prosecutors, after being spotted by a Secret Service agent. Law enforcement said the eyewitness statement was critical in locating and charging Routh.
In a 13-page court filing in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the defense claimed that police induced or were “impermissibly suggestive” when questioning the witness, who was allegedly shown a single photograph of Routh taken after his arrest.
Routh’s legal team claimed police created a situation that would result in a “irreparable misidentification” and requested that a judge exclude Routh’s witness identification from the trial, which is set to begin on September 8, 2025. The defense claimed the testimony would be “constitutionally inadmissible” in court.
When Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw announced Routh’s charges last year, he stated that after police received a call from the Secret Service at 1:30 p.m. reporting shots fired, a witness saw a man jump out of the bushes and flee in a black Nissan.
Law enforcement discovered an AK-47-style rifle with a scope, two backpacks containing ceramic tiles, and a GoPro camera in the bushes near the scene, according to Bradshaw. Secret Service officials later confirmed that the suspect did not fire any shots and did not have a direct line of sight to Mr. Trump.
The Justice Department also stated that a witness saw Routh running across the road from the golf course and getting into a black Nissan Xterra.
“Based on information provided by the witness, Routh was later apprehended heading northbound on I-95 by officers from the Martin County, Florida, Sheriff’s Office, in coordination with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office,” said a department spokesperson.
According to Routh’s attorneys, the witness, identified only as T.C.M., was driving to a furniture store when he heard three gunshots.
“The windows of his vehicle were up,” they stated in the court filing. According to the document, T.C.M. saw a disheveled male run from the bushes out of the golf course, followed by a person approaching a black vehicle, dropping something black and small inside through the sunroof, and then entering the vehicle.
According to Routh’s attorneys, the witness photographed the vehicle three times and wrote down the license plate. The witness allegedly later told police that he saw “a white male, 6’2″ tall, light-colored hair, and wearing a dark shirt and dark pants,” adding that the person was “a younger male in his twenties.”
An hour later, law enforcement officers stopped Routh in a 2007 black Nissan Xterra without a sunroof, according to his legal team.
The defense team claimed that the witness “had dozens of law enforcement from numerous state and federal agencies watching him, thousands of stranded pedestrians on the highway awaiting this airlift and show-up, and knowledge that his identification was necessary in a case involving presidential candidate Donald Trump.”
“All of these circumstances created heightened pressure to make the identification,” attorneys wrote in the filing. “It would not be difficult for any well-meaning individual to identify the one, and only, person law enforcement presented to them in this manner.”
Routh, 58, a Hawaii resident, has pleaded not guilty to attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and possession of a firearm with an illegible serial number. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.