The first day of opening statements in Ryan Routh’s federal trial ended with Judge Aileen Cannon noting the case was ‘moving at a pretty fast clip,’ after a lengthy day of testimony that put the Secret Service agent who spotted Routh in the bushes, a civilian witness who chased him down, and FBI agents on the stand.

Routh is accused of attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump last year while he was golfing.

The morning began with Routh’s own rambling opening statement, which lasted just seven minutes before Cannon cut him off for going off-topic.

‘What is intent? … Why are we here? What is our intent? To love one another … Is this so difficult?’ Routh asked. He went on to reference Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Putin, Sudan’s civil war and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

‘We have limited patience, and you don’t have unlimited license to go forward and make a mockery of the dignity of this courtroom,’ Cannon told him.

Federal prosecutors opened their case against Routh on Thursday, telling the 12 jurors he had come ‘within seconds’ of assassinating Trump during a round of golf in West Palm Beach last year.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Shipley read Routh’s own words to the jury — ‘Trump cannot be elected’ and ‘I need Trump to go away’ — before laying out what he described as a ‘deadly serious’ plan to kill a major presidential candidate.

Shipley said Routh had traveled from Hawaii to the mainland with a Chinese military-grade assault rifle, 20 rounds of ammunition, 10 burner phones, three aliases, stolen license plates and ‘a trail of lies from Honolulu to Florida.’

Jurors then heard from Special Agent Robert Fercano, who testified he was five feet away when he saw Routh’s face and the barrel of a rifle pointing directly at him on the sixth hole of Trump International Golf Course. ‘

‘This appeared to be a textbook ambush scenario,’ he told the jury, describing how he fired while walking backward to cover. Prosecutors showed the Chinese-made SKS rifle and played Fercano’s radio calls, where ‘shots fired, shots fired, shots fired’ could be heard.

Routh, representing himself, opened his cross-examination with: ‘Good to see ya. First question, is it good to be alive?’ Fercano replied, ‘Yes, it is good to be alive.’ The agent repeatedly identified Routh as the man who smiled at him from the bushes.

Later, jurors heard from Tommy McGee, a mental health professional who testified he saw a frantic man running from the golf course and later helped authorities track down Routh’s black Nissan Xterra. McGee identified Routh in court and in video shown to the jury. Routh’s cross-examination drew objections after he asked McGee if he supported Trump and whether ‘Madea, Beyoncé and Michelle Obama will be mad’ if he did.

Additional agents who testified described recovering the rifle and other gear, and processing Routh after his arrest. One FBI agent displayed the clothing Routh allegedly wore the day he was captured, along with a debit card in his name.

Routh’s questions grew increasingly odd as the afternoon wore on — at one point asking an agent whether ‘someone who loses things’ might drill a hole in a debit card to keep it on a key ring.

Routh has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate and assaulting a federal officer. Prosecutors say he had been armed with an AK-style rifle when Secret Service agents stopped him near Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach in September 2024. The attempt came just months after Trump had been shot and narrowly survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The trial resumes Friday morning in Fort Pierce federal court.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that the U.S. would respond after former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was convicted of plotting a coup to remain in power after his loss in the 2022 election, although the secretary did not go into detail about what a U.S. response would look like.

‘The political persecutions by sanctioned human rights abuser Alexandre de Moraes continue, as he and others on Brazil’s supreme court have unjustly ruled to imprison former President Jair Bolsonaro,’ Rubio wrote on X.

‘The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt,’ he continued.

Brazil’s Foreign Ministry argued that Rubio’s comment represented a threat that ‘attacks Brazilian authority and ignores the facts and the compelling evidence in the records.’

The ministry said Brazilian democracy would not be intimidated by the U.S. government.

Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison when he was convicted by the country’s Supreme Court on Thursday on charges of plotting a coup to stop President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking office in January 2023.

The former Brazilian leader was a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump during the first Trump administration.

‘Well, I watched that trial. I know him pretty well. I thought he was a good president of Brazil, and it’s very surprising that could happen very much like they tried to do with me, but they didn’t get away with it at all,’ Trump told reporters, noting the legal cases against the U.S. president in recent years at the state and federal level, which included his conviction in New York.

‘But I can always say this: I knew him as president of Brazil. He was a good man,’ he added.

Trump has criticized the Brazilian judicial system and threatened tariffs on the country for its case against Bolsonaro.

In July, the U.S. president placed 50% tariffs on most Brazilian goods in response to a ‘witch hunt’ against Bolsonaro. He later exempted some Brazilian exports, including passenger vehicles and numerous parts and components used in civil aircraft.

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, his unspecified allies on the court and his immediate family members will face visa revocations, according to Rubio, who criticized what he called a ‘political witch hunt’ against the former president.

That same month, Rubio announced visa revocations on Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who presided over Bolsonaro’s criminal case, and his unspecified allies on the court after the court issued search warrants and restraining orders against Bolsonaro.

The U.S. Treasury Department had also sanctioned the judge over allegations of authorizing arbitrary pre-trial detentions and suppressing freedom of expression.

Bolsonaro’s son, Brazilian Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, said he anticipates additional U.S. sanctions against Brazilian justices following his father’s conviction.

‘We are going to have a firm response with actions from the U.S. government against this dictatorship that is being installed in Brazil,’ he told Reuters on Thursday.

He warned that justices who voted to convict the former president could face sanctions under the Magnitsky Act, which was previously used by the Trump administration against de Moraes.

‘If these Supreme Court justices keep following Moraes, they also run the risk of facing the same sanction,’ he said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is appearing before the House Oversight Committee on Friday for a high-profile interview on whether senior staffers worked to obscure signs of mental decline in then-President Joe Biden.

Jean-Pierre is one of the highest-profile figures so far to appear before the committee, having been the most public-facing spokesperson for Biden from May 2022 until the end of his term.

The longtime Democrat-turned-Independent did not speak to reporters on her way into her closed-door transcribed interview with House investigators, which is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. and is likely to last into the afternoon.

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., is investigating whether there was a cover-up of Biden’s mental and physical state in the White House, and whether any executive actions were approved via autopen without the then-president’s full awareness.

Of particular interest to committee investigators are the myriad clemency orders Biden signed, including about 2,500 toward the end of his presidency that were executed via autopen.

Biden himself told The New York Times recently that he made every clemency decision on his own. His allies have also blasted the Republican-led probe as a partisan exercise.

Jean-Pierre was among those who publicly defended Biden in the wake of his disastrous June 2024 debate against then-candidate Donald Trump. She told reporters at a press briefing in early July that Biden was ‘as sharp as ever.’

But unlike other ex-Biden administration aides who have appeared ahead of her – many of whom still hold close ties and fierce loyalty to Biden – Jean-Pierre had a very public falling out with their world earlier this year.

In June, Jean-Pierre announced she was writing a book titled ‘Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines.’

She also announced she was leaving the Democratic Party in a press release for that book, expected in October 2025.

A summary for her book suggests it is about ‘the three weeks that led to Biden’s abandonment of his bid for a second term and the betrayal by the Democratic Party that led to his decision.’

The announcement was reportedly met with scorn by others in Biden’s orbit.

‘The hubris of thinking you can position yourself as an outsider when you not only have enjoyed the perks of extreme proximity to power — which…bestows the name recognition needed to sell books off your name — but have actively wielded it from the biggest pulpit there is, is as breathtaking as it is desperate,’ one former official told Axios.

Another person told the outlet she ‘was one of the most ineffectual and unprepared people I’ve ever worked with.’

Comer sent a letter to Jean-Pierre in late June asking her to appear for an interview, in which he pointed out she was ‘a trusted inner-circle confidante’ and ‘near the president daily.’

‘Your assertion, on multiple occasions, that President Biden’s decline was attributable to such tactics as ‘cheap fakes’ or ‘misinformation’ cannot go without investigation. If White House staff carried out a strategy lasting months or even years to hide the chief executive’s condition — or to perform his duties — Congress may need to consider a legislative response,’ Comer wrote.

After the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk sent shockwaves through the political landscape this week, Fox News Digital spoke to several high-profile conservative speakers about the future of the movement and the influence Kirk’s legacy and style will have on it. 

‘Conservatives will not be silenced,’ Heather Mac Donald, Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal, told Fox News Digital, adding that Kirk ‘would not have been silenced’ so conservatives should ’emulate his courage.’

Columnist and commentator Bethany Mandel told Fox News Digital that Kirk’s assassination was ‘absolutely an effort to try to silence conservatives’ and that ‘we have to resist the temptation to allow that.’

‘We need to keep speaking out and double down on not only Charlie’s message, but his methodology,’ Mandel said.

Kirk was assassinated on Wednesday while speaking to thousands of students at Utah Valley University when a gunman positioned on a nearby roof fired a single shot, striking Kirk in the neck.

Kirk was rushed to Timpanogos Regional Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, prompting an outpouring of support from conservatives across the globe, including President Trump who called the killing a ‘dark moment for America.’

On Friday, authorities announced that they had arrested a suspect, 22-year-old Utah resident Tyler Robinson.

‘Charlie Kirk was a good man,’ John Ashbrook, co-host of the conservative podcast Ruthless, told Fox News Digital. ‘And his legacy will endure because none of us will ever forget his leadership nor the voice he provided for millions of regular people across this country.’

Mac Donald told Fox News Digital that it is ‘hard to imagine’ Kirk was killed for ‘any other reason than that he was breaking the stranglehold of anti-Western ideology on college campuses and beyond.’

‘It was sadly fitting that he was killed at a college campus, and not even one known for its leftward leanings, since colleges are the seed bed of modern day speech suppression and the false equations that political contrarian speech = hate speech and that hate speech may be snuffed out—apparently by any means necessary,’ Mac Donald said. 

‘The killer apparently agreed with those would-be censorers.  The self-centeredness and historical and moral ignorance of coddled American students has bloomed into something more pernicious, as the beatification of Luigi Mangione already showed.’

Going forward, in terms of security at events for prominent conservative speakers, Mandel called on campuses and cities that ‘claim to care about the future of America and civil discourse’ to step up and ‘ensure adequate security.’

‘We should not have to pay tax in the form of security in order to safely share our political opinions,’ Mandel told Fox News Digital. 

Conservatives have rallied around Kirk’s style of speaking out publicly and exchanging ideas with those who disagree, including prominent influencer Ben Shapiro who wrote on X that ‘we will never stop debating and discussing.’

‘We will never stop standing up for what America is and what she should be,’ Shapiro said, adding that he intends to continue speaking at colleges across the country despite the inherent dangers. 

Mac Donald told Fox News Digital, ‘It is a cliché and self-serving to say: they fear us because we are winning, but presumably, there is less of a perceived need to efface someone who is losing a cause anyway. Kirk was feared because he was winning.’

The rifle that federal investigators believe was used in the shooting that killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk contained ammunition inscribed with anti-fascist messaging, shedding light on the suspect’s motive.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox confirmed the messaging at a news conference Friday, saying investigators discovered inscriptions on casings found with a bolt-action rifle near the Utah Valley University campus, where Kirk was killed during an event.

One used casing and three unused casings contained the writings, Cox said.

News of the ammunition inscriptions was first shared on social media Thursday morning in a preliminary bulletin attributed to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. 

According to the bulletin, circulated on X by political commentator Steven Crowder, federal officials recovered a .30-06 caliber Mauser rifle in the woods that contained ‘engravings,’ including messaging expressing anti-fascist ideology and other messages.

Fox News Digital confirmed the veracity of the ATF bulletin through talking to multiple sources, but the sources stressed on Thursday that the information was preliminary.

The information about the firearm surfaced nearly 24 hours after Kirk, 31, was shot and killed during a speaking engagement in Utah. Both his graphic death and the scant public information revealed in the early hours of the investigation into his killing left the nation reeling and revived heated debate about political violence in the U.S.

Law enforcement officials worked frantically in the aftermath of Kirk’s death to track down and arrest the gunman, who they announced Friday was Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah man.

Cox on Friday called the shooting a ‘political assassination.’

‘This is certainly about the tragic death, assassination, political assassination of Charlie Kirk, but it is also much bigger than an attack on an individual,’ Cox said. ‘It is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the American experiment.’

FBI Director Kash Patel laid out the timeline of the investigation Friday, saying it took the FBI and Utah law enforcement 33 hours to make an arrest. Patel said authorities made ‘historic progress’ in such a short duration of time.

The FBI’s Salt Lake City Field Office released an image Thursday of a man they had said was a ‘person of interest’ in Kirk’s death and asked the public for help identifying him. The bureau also announced it was offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture. Cox said a tip from a family friend of Robinson’s led to his arrest.