FILE PHOTO: Ryan W. Routh poses in a jail booking photograph in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. February 10, 2010. Guilford County Sheriff's Office/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

By Andrew Goudsward

FORT PIERCE, Florida (Reuters) - The man accused of attempting to kill President Donald Trump last year at his Florida golf course began his trial on Monday and, facing the prospect of life in prison, opted to fire his legal team and defend himself in court.

Ryan Routh, 59, faces five charges including attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate. Prosecutors alleged he concealed himself with a rifle near the sixth green of Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach intending to shoot Trump during a round of golf in the final weeks of the 2024 campaign.

A U.S. Secret Service agent spotted Routh hiding in the tree line and opened fire, prompting Routh to flee before he fired a shot, according to court documents.

Routh has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The trial in federal court in Fort Pierce, Florida, which began with jury selection on Monday, is likely to provide a detailed account of what prosecutors allege was the second attempt on Trump’s life in a two-month span. The gunman in the first attempt, which wounded Trump in the ear, was killed at the scene.

It is also likely to test how far Routh, a struggling roofing contractor with a history of quixotic advocacy for vulnerable democracies including Ukraine and Taiwan, can go in turning the proceedings into a forum for his own views.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the case, on Monday rejected Routh's proposed questions to prospective jurors in the case, calling them "very much off base" and irrelevant to the proceedings. The questions, Cannon said, included queries about pro-Palestinian student activism and Trump's support for a U.S. takeover of Greenland.

Since firing his team of public defenders in July, Routh has used court filings to propose a “beatdown session” with Trump, floated trading himself for a prisoner held by China or Iran and unsuccessfully sought to introduce expert testimony of his own “narcissism.”

Routh, who has no formal legal training, is set to deliver opening and closing statements, question witnesses and present evidence on his behalf. His two former lawyers will serve as “standby counsel,” ready to provide advice if called upon.

“It was ridiculous from the outset to consider a random stranger that knows nothing of who I am to speak for me,” Routh wrote in a letter to Cannon. “Best I walk alone.”

TRUMP APPOINTEE

Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in his first term, also oversaw the criminal case accusing Trump of illegally holding onto classified documents. She drew widespread attention, and criticism from many legal scholars, for her decision last year to throw out the case based on a finding that the lead prosecutor was unlawfully appointed.

Criminal defendants have a legal right to self-representation, but Routh’s gambit injects an unpredictable element into the trial and increases legal risks, legal experts said.

“If his sole goal is to be acquitted, then his chances probably go down,” said Erica Hashimoto, a law professor at Georgetown University who has studied self-representation in criminal cases. “If he has something else that he’s trying to do by going to trial, then representing himself may be the only way to do that.”

Routh has sought to show the jury his prior writings advocating for persecuted populations and the “common man,” which he has cited as evidence of a non-violent nature.

Routh wrote in a self-published book in 2023 that he voted for Trump in 2016, but had soured on him since, viewing the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as part of a global assault on democracy.

Routh will face strict limits on his ability to deliver political or ideological arguments at trial. The prosecution and defense previously agreed that he could not make any argument that his alleged actions were somehow justified or necessary.

Cannon has already ruled that some of his prior writings cannot be presented as evidence. She warned Routh in a recent order against using witness testimony as a “tool for calculated chaos.”

Prosecutors plan to show the jury at least one letter Routh purportedly authored. The missive, addressed “Dear World” and allegedly included in a box left with an acquaintance months before the incident, begins, “this was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but I’m so sorry I failed you.”

Prosecutors will have to show both that Routh intended to kill Trump and took a substantial step toward doing so.

Prosecutors allege that Routh on September 15, 2024, assembled a “sniper’s nest” overlooking the sixth hole of the golf course with a SKS-style rifle loaded with 20 rounds of ammunition and ballistic plates for protection.

At the time the Secret Service spotted Routh, Trump was a few hundred yards away near the fifth hole of the course, prosecutors have said. He would have been on the sixth green within about 15 minutes.

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; editing by Scott Malone, David Gregorio and Marguerita Choy)