Feds should call off their turf-war bid to control Florida Trump-assassination case

In the second attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump this summer, the Biden-Harris Justice Department has rushed to charge Ryan Wesley Routh in a two-count criminal complaint alleging federal firearms offenses.These are obviously not the main crimes here: This appears to be a case of attempted murder of a major-party presidential candidate.Naturally, we have the makings of a prosecutorial turf war.Attempted murder is a state crime — a very serious one in the state of Florida, where murder is a capital offense.From a public-interest perspective, the case should be charged as attempted murder.But it appears that the feds have rushed to lodge federal charges against Routh in hopes of getting the upper hand over their state counterparts.Assassination attempts are rare; ambitious prosecutors are not.

And ambitious federal prosecutors always want to control the criminal cases of great national consequence.Yet that is not always the best thing for the case.There is little doubt that both federal and state authorities have charges they can and should bring against the would-be assailant.In the first instance, prosecution should proceed in the system in which the most straightforward, appropriately severe charges can be brought.In this instance, that is the state of Florida.Moreover, in 2022, Biden-Harris Attorney General Merrick Garland speciously claimed that Trump’s status as a Republican candidate running against the Biden-Harris ticket required appointment of a special counsel — because it was supposedly inappropriate for the DOJ to become embroiled in prosecutions involving the likely Republican nominee.This was a political calculation.There was no need for a special counsel in DOJ’s investigation of Trump, which had been going on for nearly two years with no special counsel appointment — two years during which Garland failed to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden and the Biden family influence-peddling scheme, as to whic...