Florida Stands Ready to Prosecute the Case Against Ryan Routh – Top 3 Takeaways – September 18th, 2024
- This is the right thing for justice. Those were the words of Governor DeSantis as he and Attorney General Ashley Moody were at the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday to provide details as to the state’s independent investigation into wannabe Trump assassin Ryan Routh. As we came to learn, and as Governor DeSantis, a Harvard trained lawyer and former JAG officer explained, Florida can prosecute what the federal government potentially can’t in this case. Specifically, as DeSantis explained, Florida can pursue an attempted murder charge against the suspect, a charge that if it led to a conviction, comes with a potential sentence of life in prison. DeSantis explained that under federal law, the federal government could only purse the attempted murder charge if Donald Trump were an active government official or if he was the president-elect. Since he’s currently only a presidential candidate the federal statute doesn’t apply. This introduces questions about the motivations and/or decision making of PBC’s state attorney. On Sunday afternoon, in the initial press conference held by authorities regarding the thwarted second assignation attempt against Donald Trump in nearly as many months, Palm Beach County’s State Attorney Dave Aronberg said this: I’m here because our prosecutors are currently working up warrants and a motion of pretrial detention for the suspect. At that point, Aronberg made it clear that his office was immediately helpful in the effort to keep the suspect behind bars pending further investigations into the attempted assassination. But by Monday morning he said: We won’t have anything to do with this. It’s all feds. His rational for washing his hands of the case was that that the federal government was leading an investigation into the assassination attempt and that he didn’t want to engage in any “turf wars”. And yes, the first charges filed in this case were two federal gun charges on Monday. Except here’s the thing and it’s a considerable thing. That’s B.S. State and federal charges are brought against defendants every single day in this country. It’s not at all uncommon for state and federal investigations to take place at the same time. It’s not at all uncommon for state and federal charges to be brought at the same time. In fact, this is actually most often the case during drug trafficking prosecutions, bank robberies and organized theft and fraud rings. That’s due to multiple reasons, but right off the top it’s due to there not being double jeopardy for being tried for the same crime in state and federal courts, if state and federal laws, are broken. So...
- Why doesn’t Dave Aronberg want to pursue this case? Noticeably absent from Tuesday’s presser was Aronberg, and Governor DeSantis didn’t name Aronberg by name, but he did say this: You have a responsibility in law enforcement and as a prosecutor to hold people accountable to the fullest extent of the law. It would be one thing to hand off to the feds if somehow they had more significant crimes that they could pursue. It doesn’t seem that, that’s the case as of now. Clearly, if you have that jurisdictional hook at the state level, for by far the most serious offense, I think this is an offense that should merit life in prison. And if we’re not going to go to the fullest extent of the law, You’re lowering the threshold for which someone in the future may try to do something like this. So I think it’s really important for the people of Florida, but also for our country that we pursue the most serious charges that are on the books to hold this guy accountable. So, what is the deal that Dave won’t dive into this case? Yes, Dave Aronberg is a lifelong Democrat who frequently articulates left-wing positions on MSNBC. But surely this type of investigation wouldn’t be a partisan thing? Right? Dave did predict the J-6 case would come to fruition prior to the election. He has predicted Trump convictions in the past. Is this the reason for his lack of willingness to do what is even standard operating procedure for drug trafficking cases? We reached out to Aronberg for an interview and/or a response yesterday and received this statement: “Our office’s involvement ended when federal prosecutors and investigators took over the case. Whenever that happens, we normally stand down and allow them to proceed. We work together with our federal partners and do not engage in turf wars.” “The Governor can authorize an FDLE investigation and the Office of Statewide Prosecution is empowered to prosecute the matter when they have jurisdiction. I won’t be speculating on the outcome of the state investigation. If a law enforcement agency provides my office with a request to file charges, we will review it like every other matter.” That makes it clear that he has no interest in assisting in the matter. He’s not even willing to inherently commit to prosecuting a case state investigators would ask him to take. DeSantis explained that due to the offenses taking place in multiple jurisdictions (Palm Beach and Martin County and potential Broward too), the state can pursue this case without the pursuit of Palm Beach County’s State Attorney, and that’s evidently what they’re going to have to do. Palm Beach County has a spotty history of properly pursuing/prosecuting high profile cases properly: IE Jefferey Epstein. Is this the latest? As DeSantis went on to say, aside from holding the suspect accountable under state law there’s something else state prosecution can do...We are in a better position in the state of Florida to provide answers to the public. I think back to what happened in Vegas, six-seven years ago. We never got any answers about that. I think back to what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, and we’ve not gotten very many answers about that. I think that it really erodes public confidence, and I think the Florida agencies working from local law enforcement on up have an opportunity to do a thorough investigation and then to provide the truth about what’s happened and how this came to be. People deserve the truth.
- The Secret Service is still broken. Thankfully, there was a great response by a Secret Service agent on Donald Trump’s detail Sunday that spotted and engaged the shooter before he could get off a shot. Unfortunately, the Secret Service’s protocols are still shoddy. First, we learned that the suspect camped out at the fence outside the golf course at Trump International for 12 hours in advance of the showdown with authorities. Yesterday, we learned that the Secret Service never swept the golf course. Now, this makes sense because it would arguably be worse for the attacker to have gone unspotted if they had...but had they, they almost certainly would have spotted the assassin-in-waiting before Donald Trump ever teed off Sunday. Why would they not sweep the golf course ahead of time? Evidently the Secret Service is still broken.