US to seek attempted assassination charge for Trump golf course suspect

The federal government will pursue a charge of attempted assassination against a man accused of lurking with a gun near where former US president Donald Trump was golfing in Florida last week, prosecutors said in a court hearing on Sept 23.

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Among the government's evidence, they said, was a note the suspect had written suggesting that he had planned the attack.

Such a charge - which prosecutors said they would seek through a grand jury indictment - would carry a maximum possible penalty of life imprisonment.

US Magistrate Judge Ryon McCabe, of the US District Court in West Palm Beach, Florida, granted the government's request on Sept 23 to keep the suspect, Ryan Routh, in jail without bond.

So far, Routh has been charged with unlawful possession of a firearm as a felon, which carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison, and with possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

Routh's defence lawyers had argued that their client was not a flight risk and did not pose a serious threat to the community, but Judge McCabe disagreed.

In a statement released by his campaign on Sept 23, Republican presidential candidate Trump accused the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of "mishandling and downplaying the second assassination attempt on my life since July". He called the charges against Routh "a slap on the wrist" and said: "Let Florida handle the case."

Last week, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, said the state would conduct its own investigation into what happened, characterizing the federal inquiry as insufficiently transparent and perhaps biased against Trump.