() – Prosecutors on Tuesday filed a charge of attempted assassination of a presidential candidate against Ryan Wesley Routh, the man they say camped out for hours outside Donald Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, armed with a rifle that he aimed through a chain-link fence with a clear view of the next hole where the former president was headed on Sept. 15.
Routh allegedly “harassed” Trump in Florida for more than a month, prosecutors told a federal magistrate judge Monday, with cellphone data allegedly placing Routh on the golf course as well as at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on several days between Aug. 18 and the day he was arrested.
Routh was originally charged with two weapons-related offenses, including removing the serial number from a firearm and possessing a firearm while a convicted felon, as the investigation continued.
Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, who oversaw and then dismissed the federal classified documents case against the former president, was randomly assigned to oversee the case, court documents show.
“The attempted assassination of the former president is an atrocious act,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference announcing an antitrust lawsuit against Visa. “I am grateful that he is safe, and as I said immediately after the event, the Department of Justice will spare no resources to ensure accountability.”
Garland said that “in the last several days,” investigators discovered information about the alleged assassination attempt and included it in the court file for the detention hearing.
The attorney general also responded to a statement Trump released Monday night in which he accused the federal government of mishandling the assassination attempt investigation and said the Justice Department should “LET FLORIDA HANDLE THE CASE!”
Garland said the Justice Department “will seek to cooperate and obtain assistance from” Florida state officials “in accordance with the law.”
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