Florida AG Moody Announces Charges Against Routh for Trump Assassination Attempt

Florida AG Moody Announces Charges Against Routh for Trump Assassination Attempt

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody announced the state will seek a warrant for Ryan Routh, the man who wanted to assassinate now-President-elect Donald Trump at his golf course in September.

The state has charged Routh with attempted felony murder and domestic terrorism.

Moody has told the DOJ many times that the state wanted to charge Routh since his escape led to an accident that injured a six-year-old girl.

Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order for state agencies to investigate and prosecute any state law violations against Routh.

The federal government hasn’t cooperated with the state despite Moody and DeSantis wanting to “pursue state law charges for state law violations.”

Federal prosecutors charged Routh with the attempted assassination of a political candidate and federal gun charges.

I transcribed her press conference:

We continue to reach out in an amicable manner. We continue to offer meetings and no evidence was shared with us. Because of that and because of the assistance that they were shutting down our investigation and asserting jurisdiction, the state of Florida, under the direction of Governor DeSantis and myself, filed suit in October against Attorney General Merrick Garland so that we could what we believe was within our right to pursue state law charges and for state law violations in the state of Florida.

Thereafter, we continued to attempt to make contact with the federal government, with the prosecutors. We informed them that as a result of the actions of the defendant and his attempt to flee on the date in question, September 15 of this year, as the stop was made and traffic was slowed, an accident happened, and a little girl was seriously injured and almost died. As a result of that, we felt compelled to seek justice on her behalf and her family that will never be the same as they cope with her injuries.

And so we continued to reach out with the federal government, explain to them to need to pursue these charges, explain to them that we were doing this to provide justice to this six year old little girl. And again they responded we should not bring charges, we should not investigate further, and they would not provide us with information.

The excuse and the reasoning kept coming back to the need to protect the case and national security. I have never been asked to meet with anyone to discuss how national security is implicated in shutting down the state of Florida’s investigation.

Our statewide prosecutor has never been invited to discuss how national security would merit shutting down our statewide investigation. To my knowledge, none of our agents have been asked to discuss what the implications may be to national security as a reason to shutting down our investigation. In fact, even after promises that someone from the national security Division would meet with our statewide prosecutor or contact our state statewide prosecutor, that never happened. And so we explained we would move forward with charges of attempted felony murder to pursue justice on behalf of this little girl.

To date, they have never contacted us or supported us in this endeavor in any way. We have sought information by subpoenas and witness interviews to support this information, to support our affidavit and complaint. And we have also used publicly available information and filing that has come through the federal investigation.

And so this morning, we obtained an arrest warrant supported by a criminal report affidavit and complaint. We will make that available to the press. As you know, when the executive order came out, I stood with Governor DeSantis and assured not just Floridians, but the American people that we would endeavor to be transparent in this process. Rightly so, there were many questions surrounding the agency, prosecuting the president elect and at the same time investigating his attempted murder. We offered to be a partner, not only to vindicate those crimes that occurred here in our state under our own state laws, but to also provide an assurance and accountability that a trusted, independent partner was part of the process.

Governor DeSantis and I were both federal prosecutors. We have both worked with federal agencies. We both believe in the mission of law enforcement, both federal and state, to hold criminals accountable and pursue justice. We believe that these agencies are essential to protecting free people under a rule of law. But that indeed is their mission, and we both believe that agencies need to be held accountable to that mission and held accountable to we, the people who are the true bosses of these agencies.

And so part of making available the affidavit and the arrest warrant to the press, in full is we want to live up to that promise, to be transparent and accountable as we both assured when we stood here and talked about our intent to investigate. The affidavit is 18 pages long. We will provide that to you immediately following this press conference.

I will go into a little bit about the charge that underlies this attempted felony murder. Following the assassination attempt, the defendant chose to flee north on I 95. At this point, he was expected to have been the shooter based on witness testimony, and that was informed to those officers that were stopping him once they located him. Protecting the public, not knowing what was in that vehicle in terms of explosive devices, tey had to stop traffic in both directions in order to effectuate the stop, make the arrest, and assure the safety of the public.

During that stop that a tragic accident occurred that seriously injured a six year old girl who was traveling with her family.

When you couple those terrible injuries together with his other criminal conduct, which we believe rises to the level of domestic terrorism, it turns his actions into an attempted felony murder case.

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