Left: Ryan Routh (Law&Crime). Center: U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida). Right: President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a meeting of the House GOP conference on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
The North Carolina man convicted of trying to assassinate President Donald Trump at a Florida golf course has appealed both his conviction and sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
In a 149-page appellate brief, attorneys for 60-year-old Ryan Routh present arguments across 14 main issues, along with numerous subclaims. They ask the appeals court to dismiss several counts and order a new trial on the remaining convictions.
Routh is also seeking a different judge if a new trial is granted. His brief sharply criticizes U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who presided over his relatively expedited criminal case.
Routh was arrested in June 2025 and convicted that September of attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate, assaulting a federal officer and committing multiple firearm violations tied to the plot.
In February of this year, Cannon sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole, followed by an additional seven years for one of the firearm offenses.
During the pretrial proceedings, Cannon rejected several requests from the defense, including a demand that Trump testify. She also denied a request for discovery that the government classified as sensitive or classified material.
That discovery dispute is now central to part of Routh’s appeal.
“The district court erred in granting the government’s motion under [classified procedure law] to withhold potentially discoverable information from the defense,” the appellate brief states.
Routh’s attorneys argue that Cannon applied the wrong legal standard when she ruled on the government’s request to keep the material from the defense.
“In allowing the government to withhold discovery, the district court erred in failing to consider whether the information would be helpful to the defense,” the brief says. “Instead, the court granted the motion based only on findings that the government made a sufficient showing that the information was classified and that its disclosure could cause serious damage or exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.”
The specific nature of the withheld material remains confidential.
Routh argues that the appeals court could conclude Cannon should have required the government to provide a summary or an alternative version rather than allowing it to withhold the information entirely.
That challenge to the discovery ruling is closely linked to a separate request for Cannon’s recusal, which she also denied. Routh contends that the secretive process surrounding the discovery decision is evidence of broader concerns about how she handled the case.
The appellate brief states:
Scrutinizing even the appearance of impartiality is particularly important here where part of the proceedings were held ex parte. Here, the court heard government ex parte filings under [classified procedure law], held ex parte hearings, and ultimately granted the government’s motion to withhold information from the defense. The doctrine of erring on the side of recusal should have even more weight in cases like this one where the case involves ex parte proceedings that determined whether the defendant has access to discoverable information that may be helpful to his defense.
“For these reasons, the motion to recuse should have been granted,” the brief states.
Routh also cites what he describes as Cannon’s “relationships to Trump” and to one of the prosecutors in the case. The judge attended high school with that prosecutor and was present at the prosecutor’s wedding, according to the filing.
“She was appointed by the alleged victim,” the brief says. “[She had] presided over other cases involving him in this district in which she had ruled in his favor and was later reversed by this Court; was publicly praised by Trump for her rulings in his cases; and media was already questioning her impartiality and whether the cases were indeed randomly assigned. Recusal was required.”
The defense further contends that the district court misapplied the law when it rejected Routh’s initial recusal motion.
“She also erred by denying the motion in part on her own findings that she was not actually biased when actual bias is irrelevant,” the brief argues.
The post “The district court erred”: Would-be Trump assassin seeks a new trial and accuses Judge Aileen Cannon of repeatedly misapplying the law first appeared on Law & Crime.
