Police release mugshot of suspect in apparent DONALD TRUMP assassination attempt

Thursday, September 19, 2024 - Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspect in the apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump, has had his mugshot released by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

Routh, 58, is charged with possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

He was taken into custody on Sunday hours after he allegedly hid in some bushes outside a Florida golf course with a rifle and scope while Trump played golf a few hundred yards away.

Routh fired no shots, and fled the scene after a Secret Service agent spotted and opened fire on him, authorities said.

They had not released a possible motive in the case.

Authorities said Routh posted comments on an X account linked to him referencing the assassination attempt on Trump at a July rally in Pennsylvania.

Routh tagged Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, in separate posts, encouraging them to visit those injured at the rally.

“You and Biden should visit the injured people in the hospital from the Trump rally and attend the funeral of the murdered fireman. Trump will never do anything for them,” he wrote in a post directed at Harris.

In an April post on X tagging President Biden’s presidential account, he wrote that Biden’s campaign should be: “called something like KADAF. Keep America democratic and free. Trump should be MASA …make Americans slaves again master. DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose.”

In June 2020, Routh appeared to say that he had voted for Trump in 2016, but that he had since withdrawn his support of the former president: “While you were my choice in 2106, I and the world hoped that President Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving,” he wrote. “I will be glad when you gone.”

Routh also has ties to North Carolina, where public records show he registered as an “unaffiliated” voter without a party in 2012. He voted in that state’s Democratic primary in March of this year, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

Routh has contributed more than $100 to ActBlue, which processes donations for Democrats, federal campaign finance records show.

Routh expressed strong support for Ukraine – in dozens of posts on X in 2022, saying he was willing to die in the fight and that “we need to burn the Kremlin to the ground.”

“I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER AND FIGHT AND DIE…Can I be the example We must win,” Routh said in an X post in March 2022.