Rene Ortiz’s public defender says he is out of touch with reality and his suggestion to kill the president-elect was just a call for attention.
PHOENIX (CN) – An Arizona man accused of filing court documents detailing a plot to kill the president never intended to do it, his attorney told a federal jury Tuesday.
Attorneys gave opening statements in the first of a four-day criminal trial in which Rene Ortiz, of Casa Grande, Arizona, is accused of threatening to kill either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris — whoever won the 2024 presidential election — and again threatening to kill Trump. after winning.
On Nov. 5, 2024, U.S. Navy combat veteran Ortiz hand-delivered a printed document to Sandra Day O’Connor’s U.S. District Court in Phoenix that read:
“I, Rene Ortiz, ask the court to execute the POTUS-elect. I chose to execute the POTUS-elect by firing an M-16A2 service rifle with a 6-round magazine. The court and the defendants are warned to withdraw from their campaign.”
On November 25, 2024, he filed two more documents with the Evo A. DeConcini US Court in Tucson, Arizona. Among other things, those documents state:
“Plaintiff asks the court that he attempt to shoot the candidate with an M-16A2 service rifle with a 3-round magazine from a distance of 300 or 500 yards, aiming at the candidate’s head and not his ear.”
Federal prosecutor Abbie Broughton told a 14-member jury panel Tuesday that Ortiz, fed up with an employment dispute with the Department of Veterans Affairs, wanted to draw attention to numerous civil complaints he had filed in the past, all of which had been dismissed.
“He made those threats because they were violent and threatening, knowing they would be taken seriously,” Broughton said.
She said Ortiz included in the documents the fact that he was rewarded by the Marines for shooting in hopes that the threat would not be taken lightly.
Representing Ortiz, public defender Michael Ryan said the specific language cited in the INDICTMENT shows no evidence of an actual threat.
“These are not just statements,” Ryan told the jury. “They are motions or appeals that ask for permission to do it yourself in a certain way. They require the court’s approval before it can act.”
Because a court would obviously never grant such a request, Ryan said no danger was ever present.
“These are just the disorganized ramblings of a mentally ill person trying to get attention,” he said.
Ryan said Ortiz’s family and psychologist will testify in the next three days that Ortiz has slowly but surely lost his grip on reality.
“He’s delusional,” Ryan said. “He is magnificent.”
He said the 56-year-old suffers from PTSD and has filed “dozens” of rambling lawsuits in federal court that make no logical sense.
In the filings, Ortiz named plaintiffs such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, the American Federation of Government Employees, the Law Offices of Alpha Zulu and two federal judges who had dismissed his previous lawsuits. He claims that the first assassination attempt on Trump was a fraud, calls for the prosecution of any citizen who voted for him or Harris, and requests a hearing before the president, vice president, speaker of the House and chief justice “to acknowledge their shortcomings and consider a transition of power in light of their failures.”
“It’s all within the same document,” Ryan said. “None of it makes sense.”
He added that Ortiz did not own a firearm and did not have the means to carry out the actions he described.
Broughton said that doesn’t matter.
“What makes this a crime is the threats themselves,” she said.
Secret Service agents interviewed Ortiz in court documents on December 5, 2024. When asked if he still intended to kill Trump, he replied, “If my demands are not met.”
When asked again, he said: “I will stand by what I wrote. I have nothing to lose.”
Elizabeth Stephenson, an employee of Clerk Sandra Day O’Connor’s office, testified that Ortiz “seemed to know what he was doing” when he filed papers in her office on Nov. 4, 2024. She said he had been at least six times before to file other lawsuits, and at those meetings, she felt wary of him.
She remained on the stand late Tuesday. Ortiz himself does not appear as a witness.
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