Florida prosecutors have said Routh methodically plotted to kill Trump for weeks before aiming a rifle through the shrubbery as he played golf at his West Palm Beach country club in September of last year.
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Ryan Routh, accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump at his Florida golf course, began representing himself Thursday as opening statements commenced in his federal trial nearly a year after a Secret Service agent thwarted the alleged plot.
He has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate, assaulting a federal officer and several firearm violations.
A panel of 12 jurors and four alternates was sworn in on Wednesday at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, in the US state of Florida.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon said that Routh will be allowed to address jurors and witnesses from a podium, but he will not have free rein of the courtroom.
The trial begins nearly a year after prosecutors say a Secret Service agent thwarted his attempt to shoot the Republican presidential nominee.
Prosecutors have said Routh, 59, methodically plotted to kill Trump for weeks before aiming a rifle through the shrubbery as he played golf at his West Palm Beach country club on 15 September 2024.
A Secret Service agent spotted Routh before Trump came into view. Officials said Routh aimed his rifle at the agent, who opened fire, causing Routh to drop his weapon and flee without firing a shot.
Routh was a North Carolina construction worker who in recent years had moved to Hawaii. A self-styled mercenary leader, he spoke out about his dangerous, sometimes violent plans to insert himself into conflicts around the world, witnesses said.
In the early days of the war in Ukraine, Routh tried to recruit soldiers from Afghanistan, Moldova and Taiwan to fight the Russians claiming he can embed them into the Ukrainian army, a scheme wholly rejected by the Ukrainian authorities and military as baseless and a "grift".
In his native Greensboro, he was arrested in 2002 for eluding a traffic stop and barricading himself from officers with a fully automatic machine gun and a "weapon of mass destruction," which turned out to be an explosive with a 25-centimetre fuse.
Assassination attempt foiled
Just nine weeks before Routh's foiled plot, Trump had survived another attempt on his life while campaigning in Pennsylvania.
That gunman had fired eight shots, with one bullet grazing Trump's ear, before being shot by a Secret Service counter sniper.
Cannon is a Trump-appointed judge who drew scrutiny for her handling of a criminal case accusing Trump of illegally storing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.
The case became mired in delays as motions piled up over months. It was ultimately dismissed by Cannon last year after she concluded that the special counsel tapped by the US Justice Department to investigate Trump was illegally appointed.
Routh's trial is expected to run for between two and three weeks. The trial's start comes as police continue their search for the gunman who killed conservative influencer Charlie Kirk at a campus in Utah on Wednesday in what some lawmakers are calling a "political assassination".