The Department of Justice has accused two people of selling Ryan Routh the gun he allegedly used to try to kill President Trump at his Florida golf club last year.
Two defendants — Tina Brown Cooper and Ronnie Jay Oxendine — have pleaded guilty to gun-related charges in federal court, after being indicted in March and arrested in April. Cooper pleaded guilty to firearm trafficking on Monday, and Oxendine pleaded guilty last month to possessing an unregistered firearm after police found a short-barreled shotgun in his storage building.
In court papers filed in both cases as part of the plea agreements, the Justice Department said the two sold Routh a Chinese-made SKS rifle in August, with Cooper allegedly acting as a middleman in a sale between Routh and Oxendine. Law enforcement said Cooper worked for Oxendine at the time of the sale at a roofing company in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Federal prosecutors alleged Cooper, Routh and Oxendine met at the roofing company’s headquarters, where Routh paid Oxendine $350 cash for the SKS rifle and $100 to Cooper for helping to arrange the sale.
About six weeks later, Routh was allegedly found with an SKS-style rifle outside Mr. Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach. In a Tuesday filing in Routh’s criminal case, prosecutors said the gun he brought to Trump International Golf Club was the same one allegedly sold to him by Oxendine and Cooper.
Neither of the defendants told law enforcement they had any advance knowledge of Routh’s alleged plans.
Routh has been charged with attempted assassination of a presidential candidate and unlawful gun possession, with prosecutors saying he was not allowed to own a firearm due to a prior 2002 weapons conviction.
Cooper allegedly told the FBI that Routh asked for help buying a gun “for his son to use as protection,” and said he couldn’t buy a gun in his real name due to his criminal conviction.
In a September interview with FBI agents, Oxendine allegedly said he met Routh in the 1990s when both of them owned roofing companies, adding that they were not friends. Cooper said she was a former employee of Routh at his roofing company in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Court filings from prosecutors say Cooper told “inconsistent stories” and acknowledged to the FBI she deleted files from her phone to “avoid any involvement with the assassination attempt.” Oxendine also allegedly told the FBI that after Routh’s assassination attempt, Cooper told him to deny any knowledge and avoid cooperating with authorities.
One court filing says in an FBI interview, Cooper “admitted she lied to agents out of fear of criminal consequences for her involvement in the attempted assassination attempt of former President Donald J. Trump.”
“Additionally, Cooper admitted she was ‘guilty’ of assisting Routh, whom she knew was a prohibited person, in acquiring a firearm,” the filing says.
Routh is not named in the initial criminal indictments against Oxendine and Cooper.
CBS News has reached out to attorneys for Routh, Oxendine and Cooper for comment.
The allegations were first reported by the conservative site Headline USA.
The charges against Cooper and Oxendine offer new details on Routh, who was charged with trying to assassinate Mr. Trump just two months after the then-presidential candidate was shot at during a Pennsylvania campaign rally.
Routh has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and is set to go to trial in September.
On Tuesday, Routh moved to fire his public defenders in the criminal case against him.
Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, asked the judge overseeing Routh’s trial to admit the details about Cooper and Oxendine’s involvement as further evidence of his guilt. They alleged Routh had also asked Cooper about potentially finding him a .50 caliber sniper rifle to buy.
Routh, prosecutors allege, told Cooper that he would remove the serial number from the SKS rifle so that it could not be traced back to Oxendine, and told Cooper to “go shopping” for him for a sniper rifle.
