family matters —
"Hundreds" of files found on SD card, FBI agent says.
Alex Schmidt / Getty Images
Oran Routh has had an eventful few weeks.
In August, he moved into a two-bed, two-bath rental unit on the second floor of a building in Greensboro, North Carolina.
On September 15, his father, Ryan Routh, was found in the bushes of the sixth hole of Trump International Golf Club with a scope and a rifle, apparently in a bid to assassinate Donald Trump, who was golfing that day.
As part of the ensuing federal investigation, the FBI raided the junior Routh's apartment on September 21. A Starbucks bag labeled "Oran" still sat on a dresser in one of the bedrooms while agents searched the home and Routh's person, looking for any evidence related to his father's actions. In the course of the search, they found one Galaxy Note 9 on Oran's person and another Galaxy Note 9 in a laptop bag.
On September 22, the FBI obtained a warrant to search the devices. The investigation of Oran Routh quickly moved in a different direction after the FBI said that it found "hundreds" of videos depicting the sexual abuse of prepubescent girls on an SD card in the Note 9 from the laptop bag.
The other Note 9, the one that Oran had with him when raided, contained not just downloaded files but also "chats from a messaging application that, based on my training and experience, is commonly used by individuals who distribute and receive child pornography," said an FBI agent in an affidavit. (The messaging app is not named.)
According to the agent, whoever used the phone had been chatting as recently as July with someone on the Internet who sold access to various cloud storage links. When asked for a sample of the linked material, the seller sent over two files depicting the abuse of young girls.
On September 23, Routh was charged in North Carolina federal court with both receipt and possession of child pornography. According to the court docket, Routh was arrested today.