As Ryan Routh faces mounting charges over the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at his Florida golf course earlier this month, his adult son has been arrested in connection with a completely different set of alleged misdeeds.
Oran Routh, 35, was charged in a North Carolina federal court on Monday with one count each of receipt and possession of images of child sexual abuse, court records show. He was arrested the following day.
An FBI special agent laid out the basis of the charges in a four-page criminal complaint, in which he explains that the FBI searched Oran Routh’s Greensboro, N.C., residence on Saturday “in connection with an investigation unrelated to child exploitation.”
It’s not clear whether the investigation in question is related to Routh’s father, though ABC News and CNN cite unnamed sources as saying so. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of North Carolina declined to elaborate beyond court filings.
Once at the house — of which Routh is the sole occupant — they recovered multiple electronic devices from his room and person, and later obtained warrants to search them.
On one phone, which had been stored inside a laptop bag, they found hundreds of files with child sexual abuse, including “videos from a known child pornography series created outside the state of North Carolina.” Videos from the unnamed series depict minors engaged in sex acts, according to the complaint.
A second phone, taken from Routh himself, revealed more. In the downloads folder, investigators found a video showing a female adult engaging in sexual acts with a younger girl, approximately 6-8 years old.
The complaint says the phone also had chats from a messaging application that is commonly used by people who distribute and receive child sex abuse imagery.
It points to a July chat in which the phone’s user — presumably Routh — responded to an account that was advertising cloud storage links for sale, by asking for a preview of the content. That individual responded with two graphic videos of adults engaging in sexual acts with minors.
A public defender listed in court filings as representing Routh has not responded to NPR’s request for comment.
Routh appeared in court for a preliminary hearing Wednesday. Prosecutors are asking that he be detained pending trial; he has a detention hearing scheduled for the afternoon of Oct. 1.
Oran Routh publicly defended his father last week
Records from the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction show that Routh was arrested in 2016 on charges of assaulting a female and interfering with emergency communications, both misdemeanors.
A LinkedIn account belonging to a person by the name of Oran Routh lists him as a customer service representative at Xerox Business Services and mentions “many years working for my family business.”
His dad, Ryan Routh, ran a roofing business in North Carolina at one point and more recently owned a company that built tiny homes in Hawaii — whose website prominently features another son, Adam.
He is facing five charges in connection with the Florida incident, including three weapons charges, assaulting a federal officer and — as of Tuesday— attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Oran publicly came to his dad’s defense after his arrest last week, saying in a statement that “I don’t have any comment beyond a character profile of him as a loving and caring father and an honest, hardworking man.”
Copyright 2024 NPR