Donald Trump
Credit: Reuters Photo
Washington: The man accused of lurking with a gun near former President Donald Trump at one of his Florida golf courses was charged Tuesday with the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
The indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in Miami and filed in Federal District Court in southern Florida. The case was randomly assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge who recently dismissed the case related to Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left office.
The new charges against the suspect, Ryan Routh, 58, were expected. They come on top of two gun charges against Routh, an itinerant contractor with an extensive criminal record who exhorted Iran to assassinate Trump.
In addition to the assassination charges, Routh was charged with possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, along with assaulting or intimidating a Secret Service agent — possibly referring to reports of his pointing the rifle in the direction of the agents before fleeing the perimeter of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
Earlier Tuesday, a federal magistrate judge ordered Routh held until trial, citing his “lengthy criminal history with over a hundred arrests,” a history of weapons violations and his recent travel to Ukraine and Taiwan, which made him a flight risk.
Just hours before that, federal prosecutors in North Carolina unsealed charges against Routh’s son, Oran Routh, accusing him of buying and possessing child sexual abuse material. An FBI search of his apartment for evidence in his father’s case uncovered “hundreds” of sexual images on his phone involving children as young as 6, according to a court filing.
According to prosecutors, Ryan Routh appeared to have surveyed the grounds of the golf course for about a month before his arrest. On Sept. 15, according to the indictment, Routh positioned himself outside the fence near the sixth hole, where around 1:30 p.m. a Secret Service agent on a golf cart who was scouting one hole ahead of the former president saw part of Routh’s face and the barrel of his gun.
At the time he was spotted, prosecutors said, Routh was aligned directly with the sixth hole, with the intention of shooting Trump from a relatively short distance using a semiautomatic rifle. A rifle equipped with a scope was found abandoned at the scene; it had a round in the chamber and a total of 11 rounds loaded. Investigators found Routh’s fingerprint on duct tape affixing the scope to the weapon, according to the indictment.
Routh did not fire before Secret Service agents fired at him. He fled in a black SUV but was arrested less than an hour later by local sheriff’s deputies.
“This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but I failed you,” Routh wrote in a note that was placed inside a box that he left at a friend’s house in North Carolina, according to prosecutors.
“I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster,” the note continued. “It is up to you to finish the job, and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.”
During a detention hearing Monday, Routh’s lawyers argued that their client was not a flight risk and did not pose a serious threat to the community. The judge disagreed and ordered that Routh be held in jail without bond. His lawyer did not immediately respond to an email Tuesday seeking comment about the new charges.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaking to reporters at the Justice Department, had said earlier Tuesday that the new indictment was imminent.
“Violence targeting public officials endangers everything our country stands for,” Garland said. “The Justice Department will not tolerate violence that strikes at the heart of our democracy, and we will find and hold accountable those who perpetrate it. This must stop.”