A man who authorities say staked out Donald Trump for 12 hours on his golf course in Florida and wrote of his desire to kill him was indicted yesterday on charges that he attempted to assassinate a major presidential candidate.
Ryan Wesley Routh had been initially charged with two federal firearms offences.
The upgraded charges reflect the Justice Department’s assessment that he methodically plotted to kill the Republican nominee, aiming a rifle through the shrubbery surrounding Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course on an afternoon Trump was playing on it.
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Routh left behind a note in which he described his intention.
The case has been assigned to US District Judge Aileen Cannon, who in July dismissed a separate criminal case charging Trump with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
The indictment had been foreshadowed during a court hearing on Monday in which prosecutors successfully argued for the 58-year-old Routh to remain behind bars as a flight risk and a threat to public safety.
They alleged that he had written of his plans to kill Trump in a handwritten note months before his September 15 arrest in which he referred to his actions as a failed “assassination attempt on Donald Trump” and offered $150,000 (AUD$217,515) for anyone who could “finish the job”.
Prosecutors also said that he kept in his car a handwritten list of venues in August, September and October at which Trump had appeared or was expected to be present.
The potential shooting was thwarted when a member of Trump’s Secret Service protective detail spotted a partially obscured face of man and a rifle barrel protruding through the golf course fence line, one hole ahead of where Trump was playing.
The agent fired in the direction of Routh, who sped away and was stopped by law enforcement in a neighboring county.
Routh did not fire any rounds and did not have Trump in his line of sight, officials have said, but left behind a digital camera, a backpack, a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope and a plastic bag containing food.
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The arrest came two months after Trump was shot and wounded in the ear in an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
The Secret Service has acknowledged failings leading up to that shooting but has said that security worked as it should have to thwart a potential attack in Florida.
The initial charges Routh faced in a criminal complaint accused him of illegally possessing his gun in spite of multiple felony convictions and with possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
It is common for prosecutors to bring preliminary and easily provable charges upon an arrest and then add more serious offenses later as the investigation develops.
The FBI had said at the outset that it was investigating the episode as an apparent assassination attempt, but the absence of an immediate charge to that effect opened the door for Republican Governor Ron DeSantis to announce his own state-level investigation that he said could produce more serious charges.
Trump complained on Monday, before the attempted assassination charges were brought, that the Justice Department was “mishandling and downplaying” the case by bringing charges that were a “slap on the wrist”.
The Justice Department also said on Monday that authorities who searched his car found six cellphones, including one that showed a Google search of how to travel from Palm Beach County to Mexico.
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A notebook found in his car was filled with criticism of the Russian and Chinese governments and notes about how to join the war on behalf of Ukraine.
In addition, the detention memo cites a book authored by Routh last year in which he lambasted Trump’s approach to foreign policy, including in Ukraine.
In the book, he wrote that Iran was “free to assassinate Trump” for having left the nuclear deal.
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