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    Trump Golf Course Suspect Is Charged With Attempted Assassination

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    The new federal indictment in Florida comes on top of two gun charges against Ryan W. Routh, an itinerant contractor with an extensive criminal record.The man accused of lurking with a gun near former President Donald J. Trump at one of his Florida golf courses was charged on Tuesday with the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.The indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in Miami and filed in Federal District Court in southern Florida. The case was randomly assigned to Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge who recently dismissed the case related to Mr. Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left office.The new charges against the suspect, Ryan W. Routh, 58, were expected. They come on top of two gun charges against Mr. Routh, an itinerant contractor with an extensive criminal record who exhorted Iran to assassinate Mr. Trump.In addition to the assassination charges, Mr. Routh was charged with possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, along with assaulting or intimidating a Secret Service agent — possibly referring to reports of his pointing the rifle in the direction of the agents before fleeing the perimeter of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.Earlier on Tuesday, a federal magistrate judge ordered Mr. Routh held until trial, citing his “lengthy criminal history with over a hundred arrests,” a history of weapons violations and his recent travel to Ukraine and Taiwan, which made him a flight risk.Just hours before that, federal prosecutors in North Carolina unsealed charges against Mr. Routh’s son, Oran A. Routh, accusing him of buying and possessing child pornography. An F.B.I. search of his apartment for evidence in his father’s case uncovered “hundreds” of sexual images on his phone involving children as young as 6, according to a court filing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Denies Effort by Trump Co-Defendant to Have Charges Dismissed

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      Walt Nauta, a personal aide to former President Donald J. Trump, claimed that he was the victim of vindictive prosecution in the classified documents case.The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case on Saturday rejected an effort by one of his co-defendants to have the charges he is facing dismissed by claiming that he was the victim of a vindictive prosecution by the government.The co-defendant, Walt Nauta, who works as a personal aide to Mr. Trump, had accused prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, of unfairly indicting him because he declined to help their efforts to build a case against the former president by testifying against him in front of a grand jury.Mr. Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., also claimed that at a meeting at the Justice Department two years ago, prosecutors had threatened to derail a judgeship he was seeking if he did not prevail on his client to turn on Mr. Trump.But in an order issued on Saturday night, Judge Aileen M. Cannon rejected those arguments, ruling that even though Mr. Nauta had refused to provide testimony against Mr. Trump, there was “no evidence suggesting that charges were brought to punish him for doing so.”And while Judge Cannon refused to weigh in on the details about Mr. Woodward’s claims that prosecutors had sought to twist his arm to win Mr. Nauta’s cooperation, she denied his vindictive prosecution motion because, as she noted, he had claimed that the government was biased against him, not against his client, as required by the law.The indictment in the documents case, which was filed last June in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., accuses Mr. Nauta of conspiring with Mr. Trump to hide from the government several boxes of classified materials that the former president removed from the White House when he left office and took to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge in Trump Documents Case Hears Arguments Over Special Counsel

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      Judge Aileen Cannon held a hearing to consider a question that has been quickly dismissed in other cases: whether there is a constitutional basis for the appointment of a special counsel.Former President Donald J. Trump’s defense team tried on Friday to persuade the judge overseeing the national security documents case to dismiss the indictment, pushing a long-shot argument that the special counsel, Jack Smith, was not properly appointed.Such defense motions are routinely denied in federal cases involving special counsels. But the judge presiding over this case, Aileen M. Cannon, has given Mr. Trump’s request extra import by holding hearings and allowing three outside lawyers time in court to make additional arguments about whether there is a constitutional mechanism for naming special counsels.“This has been very illuminating and helpful,” Judge Cannon said at the close of about four hours of arguments and a steady beat of her own questions, which often began with, “Would you agree that.”Mr. Trump’s team argued that the attorney general lacks constitutional authority to appoint someone with the powers of a special counsel. “The text of these statutes really matters,” said Emil Bove, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers. He also argued that Mr. Smith should have been confirmed by the Senate because his position is so powerful.Prosecutors argued that well-established precedents demonstrate that the attorney general does have that power, citing a string of court decisions upholding special counsel investigations. “We’re interpreting statutory terms consistent with the Constitution,” said James I. Pearce, a member of the special counsel’s team.Judge Cannon’s questions addressed language in specific laws, past precedents and excerpts from lawyers’ written briefs. At times on Friday, her courtroom sounded like a university seminar on the history of the Justice Department, national scandals that have drawn special counsels and the various interpretations of the meaning of words in decades-old laws.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Lawyers Argue Barring Attacks on F.B.I. Would Censor ‘Political Speech’

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      In a filing, the lawyers in the classified documents case made an aggressive, and at times misleading, argument against prosecutors’ request for the judge to curb his attacks on agents.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump pushed back on Friday night in an aggressive — and at times misleading — way against an effort to curb his public attacks on the F.B.I. agents working on his classified documents case in Florida.In a 20-page court filing, the lawyers assailed prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, for seeking to limit Mr. Trump’s remarks about the F.B.I. on the eve of two consequential political events: the first presidential debate, scheduled for June 27, and the Republican National Convention, set to start on July 15.“The motion is a naked effort to impose totalitarian censorship of core political speech, under threat of incarceration, in a clear attempt to silence President Trump’s arguments to the American people about the outrageous nature of this investigation and prosecution,” the lawyers wrote.The dispute began last month when Mr. Smith’s team asked Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the case, to revise Mr. Trump’s conditions of release to bar him from making any public remarks that might endanger agents involved in the proceeding.The request came days after Mr. Trump made a series of blatantly false statements, claiming that the F.B.I. had been prepared to shoot him when agents executed a search warrant in August 2022 at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida. In that search, the agents discovered more than 100 classified documents. Mr. Trump is now charged with illegally retaining classified information and obstructing the government’s attempts to retrieve it.The distortions arose from a gross mischaracterization by the former president of a recently unsealed order for the Mar-a-Lago search that included boilerplate language intended to limit the use of deadly force when agents execute warrants.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump and Allies Assail Conviction With Faulty Claims

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      After former President Donald J. Trump was found guilty, he and a number of conservative figures in the news media and lawmakers on the right have spread false and misleading claims about the Manhattan case.After former President Donald J. Trump was found guilty of all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, he instantly rejected the verdict and assailed the judge and criminal justice system.His loyalists in the conservative news media and Congress quickly followed suit, echoing his baseless assertions that he had fallen victim to a politically motivated sham trial.The display of unity reflected the extent of Mr. Trump’s hold over his base.The former president and his supporters have singled out the judge who presided over the case, denigrated the judicial system and distorted the circumstances of the charges against him and his subsequent conviction.Here’s a fact check of some of their claims.What Was Said“We had a conflicted judge, highly conflicted. There’s never been a more conflicted judge.”— Mr. Trump in a news conference on Friday at Trump Tower in ManhattanThis is exaggerated. For over a year, Mr. Trump and his allies have said Justice Juan M. Merchan should not preside over the case because of his daughter’s line of work. Loren Merchan, the daughter, served as the president of a digital campaign strategy agency that has done work for many prominent Democrats, including Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign.Experts in judicial ethics have said Ms. Merchan’s work is not sufficient grounds for recusal. When Mr. Trump’s legal team sought his recusal because of his daughter, Justice Merchan sought counsel from the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics, which said it did not see any conflict of interest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Lawyers Assail Limited Gag Order Request in Documents Case

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      The latest battle over what the former president can say about a continuing legal case came after he falsely suggested that F.B.I. agents were authorized to shoot him when they searched Mar-a-Lago.Former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers on Monday assailed a request by federal prosecutors to limit what he could say about a new flare-up in a case accusing him of illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office.In an angry court filing, the lawyers pushed back hard against the request by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to revise Mr. Trump’s conditions of release by forbidding him to make any public comments that might endanger federal agents working on the prosecution.On Friday evening, Mr. Smith’s team requested what amounted to a limited gag order on Mr. Trump, prompted by what it called “grossly misleading” social media posts the former president made last week falsely claiming that the F.B.I. had been authorized to kill him when agents searched Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club and residence, in August 2022.The former president’s statements were based on a recently unsealed operational order for the search that contained boilerplate language spelling out that the use of deadly force could be used only in case of emergency, a standard provision applied to all searches conducted by the bureau.In their motion to Judge Aileen M. Cannon in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., Mr. Trump’s lawyers said that Mr. Smith’s request was “an extraordinary, unprecedented and unconstitutional censorship application” that “unjustly targets President Trump’s campaign speech while he is the leading candidate for the presidency.”Mr. Trump’s legal team said that Mr. Smith’s request should be stricken from the docket and that he and his prosecutors should face contempt sanctions for filing it in the first place.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecutors Seek to Bar Trump From Attacking F.B.I. Agents in Documents Case

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      The prosecutors said the former president had made “grossly misleading” assertions about the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago that could endanger the agents involved.Federal prosecutors on Friday night asked the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case to bar him from making any statements that might endanger law enforcement agents involved in the proceedings.Prosecutors said Mr. Trump had recently made “grossly misleading” assertions about the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, two years ago. The request came just days after the former president falsely suggested that the F.B.I. had been authorized to shoot him when agents descended on Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 and discovered more than 100 classified documents while executing a court-approved search warrant.In a social media post on Tuesday, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that President Biden “authorized the FBI to use deadly (lethal) force” during the search.Mr. Trump’s post was a reaction to an F.B.I. operational plan for the Mar-a-Lago search that was unsealed on Tuesday as part of a legal motion filed by Mr. Trump’s lawyers. The plan contained a boilerplate reference to lethal force being authorized as part of the search, which prosecutors said Mr. Trump had distorted.“As Trump is well aware, the F.B.I. took extraordinary care to execute the search warrant unobtrusively and without needless confrontation,” prosecutors wrote in a motion to Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the case.“They scheduled the search of Mar-a-Lago for a time when he and his family would be away,” the prosecutor added. “They planned to coordinate with Trump’s attorney, Secret Service agents and Mar-a-Lago staff before and during the execution of the warrant; and they planned for contingencies — which, in fact, never came to pass — about with whom to communicate if Trump were to arrive on the scene.”The request to Judge Cannon was the first time that prosecutors have sought to restrict Mr. Trump’s public statements in the case.Prosecutors did not seek to impose a gag order on Mr. Trump, but instead asked Judge Cannon to revise his conditions of release to forbid him from making any public comments “that pose a significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation.” More

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      Judge in Documents Case Rejects Dismissal Motions by Trump Co-Defendants

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      Judge Aileen M. Cannon denied requests by Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira to have the charges against them dropped.The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case on Thursday denied initial attempts by Mr. Trump’s two co-defendants to have the charges against them dismissed.The ruling by the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, was the first time she had rejected dismissal motions by the two men, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, both of whom work for Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.Prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, say that Mr. Nauta, one of Mr. Trump’s closest personal aides, and Mr. De Oliveira, the property manager of Mar-a-Lago, conspired with the former president to hide from the government boxes of classified materials that Mr. Trump had removed from the White House, and then took part in a related plot to destroy security camera footage of the boxes being moved. The men have also been charged with lying to investigators working on the case.At a hearing last week in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., lawyers for the two men tried to convince Judge Cannon that their clients had no idea that the boxes they had moved on Mr. Trump’s behalf contained classified materials. The lawyers also said they needed more details about the evidence against the men than what was contained in the 53-page superseding indictment.Mr. Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., raised an additional claim: that the obstruction statute his client was charged with violating was unconstitutionally vague.On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard somewhat similar arguments about that law, which has been used not only against hundreds of pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but also against Mr. Trump himself in both the classified documents case and the federal case in which he stands accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More