A man who authorities say watched Donald Trump for 12 hours at his Florida golf course and wrote about wanting to kill him was charged Tuesday with trying to assassinate a leading presidential candidate.
Ryan Wesley Routh had initially been charged with two federal firearms offenses. The most serious charges reflect the Justice Department’s assessment that the defendant methodically conspired to kill the Republican nominee, aiming a rifle through the bushes surrounding Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach one afternoon when the president was playing there. Routh left a note describing his intent.
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who in July dismissed a separate criminal case accusing Trump of illegally stockpiling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
The charge was announced during a court hearing on Monday in which prosecutors successfully argued that Routh, 58, should remain behind bars on the grounds that he posed a flight risk and a threat to public safety.
They said he had written about his plans to kill Trump in a handwritten note months before his Sept. 15 arrest, referring to his actions as a failed “assassination attempt on Donald Trump” and offering $150,000 to anyone who could “finish the job.” Prosecutors also said he kept a handwritten list in his car of locations in August, September and October where Trump had appeared or was expected to appear.
The potential shootout was thwarted when a member of Trump’s Secret Service protection team saw a man’s partially obscured face and the barrel of a rifle sticking out of the fence of the golf course, one hole down from where Trump was playing. The agent fired in the direction of Routh, who sped away and was arrested by police in a neighboring county.
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Routh did not fire any shots and did not have Trump in his line of sight, officials said, but he left behind a digital camera, a backpack, a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope and a plastic bag containing food.
The arrest came two months after Trump was shot in the ear at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. The Secret Service has acknowledged mistakes that led to the shooting but has said security worked as it should to prevent a possible attack in Florida.
The initial charges Routh faced in a criminal complaint accused him of illegally possessing his gun despite multiple felony convictions and of possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. It is common for prosecutors to file preliminary, easily provable charges following an arrest and then add more serious crimes later as the investigation progresses.
The FBI had said from the start that it was investigating the incident as an apparent attempted murder, but the lack of any immediate charges in that regard opened the door for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to announce his own statewide investigation that he said could lead to more serious charges.
Trump complained on Monday, before the attempted murder charges were filed, that the Justice Department was “mishandling and downplaying” the case by bringing charges that were a “light punishment.”
The Justice Department also said Monday that authorities searching his car found six cellphones, including one that displayed a Google search for how to travel from Palm Beach County to Mexico.
A notebook was found in his car filled with criticism of the Russian and Chinese governments and notes on how to join the war on behalf of Ukraine.
The detention memo also cites a book Routh wrote last year in which he criticized Trump’s foreign policy stance, including on Ukraine. In the book, he wrote that Iran was “free to assassinate Trump” for abandoning the nuclear deal.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
