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 which there was a patent conflict of interest.

Nevertheless, having made this decision, the Biden-Harris administration and its Justice Department should be stuck with it.

Garland claimed DOJ should stay out of Trump-related cases, and that a special counsel was necessary to insulate it from claims of politicized prosecution.

In light of those representations, then, the department should defer to Florida prosecutors.

More to the point, Florida should have primacy for legal reasons.

Attempted murder is a very straightforward charge in the state, carrying a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

By contrast, the Justice Department may only charge murder or attempted murder if Congress has provided some jurisdictional basis for doing so.

As I’ve elsewhere elaborated, federal law clearly makes it a crime to attempt to assassinate a president, a president-elect or a presidential candidate who has apparently prevailed in the election (i.e., one who appears to have won the majority of state electoral votes but whose victory has not yet been ratified by Congress).

But the relevant statute does not cover major party candidates for president prior to the election.

Similarly, federal law provides for murder and attempted murder charges to be brought when the victim is a federal officer or employee, a visiting foreign dignitary, or a member of their families.

But again, those statutes don’t cover candidates for the presidency.

I suspect this is why the feds rushed to charge firearms offenses.

These, undoubtedly, are crimes over which the federal government has jurisdiction, provided that there is evidence that the gun in question has traveled in interstate commerce.

The feds were quick to point out that the gun allegedly recovered from Routh is not manufactured in Florida, creating the inference of interstate shipment.

That is fine as far as it goes. Criminals who attempt to influence elections by violent means should be hit hard with the full array of federal and state crimes.

But that said, this is an attempted murder case. Florida has the simplest criminal laws for that, and thus the best chance of prevailing at trial on the most fitting charges.

And with the Biden-Harris DOJ’s record of claiming it should not participate directly in cases involving Trump that could influence the election, federal prosecutors should make way for their state counterparts to bring the first case against the would-be assassin.

Andrew C. McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor.

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The son of the man accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump at his Florida golf course Sunday said his father had traveled to Ukraine and volunteered to provide what the son described as “humanitarian” aid to troops defending the country from Russian forces that invaded in 2022.

A source with direct knowledge of the investigation confirmed to the Guardian that the suspect in Sunday’s case is 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh – though law enforcement has not officially named him and there was no immediate indication of a motive.

His son, Oran Routh, repeatedly said he had not been able to immediately speak to his father or get information about the accusations against him, so he did not want to talk on his behalf.

But he also described his father as passionate about the Ukraine cause.

“My dad went over there and saw people fucking fighting and dying,” the younger Routh said during a brief telephone call when asked about his father. “He … tried to make sure shit was cool, and shit was not cool.”

Referring to the former president, who days earlier at the presidential debate would not answer whether he wanted Ukraine to win its war against Russia, Oran Routh said: “Meanwhile, this guy’s sitting behind his fucking desk, not doing a goddamn thing.”

A review of posts on Twitter/X associated with an account under Ryan Routh’s name also show Ukraine was an important cause to him. Two posts on that account from August 2023 addressed Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. One said Routh was in Kyiv and wanted to create a tent city for foreigners in a local park in hopes that would prompt more people from abroad to “raise great support and equipment”.

The other suggested that Zelenskiy asked Congress to put all members of the American military on paid leave “so they can fight as civilians in Ukraine”.

A third post from December also expressed concern for Haiti, which has been dealing with violent civil unrest.

Trump invoked both Ukraine and Haiti in his recent debate with Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for the 5 November White House race.

With respect to the latter country, the Republican nominee would only say he wanted Ukraine’s war with Russia “to stop”. But he made it a point to avoid saying he wanted Ukraine to triumph, fueling concerns that a second Trump presidency could suspend US military support to those defending the country.

Asked what he would tell his father if he could speak to him, Oran Routh said: “I know the discourse isn’t working, but we still need to stick to the discourse.”

He then politely excused himself from the conversation to try to find out more information about his father’s arrest on Sunday.

In a separate interview with CNN on Sunday, Oran Routh also called Ryan “a loving and caring father” and an “honest hardworking man”.

“I don’t know what has happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion, because from the little I’ve heard it doesn’t sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent,” he said.

Online records show a man with the same name and age as Ryan Routh is registered to vote in North Carolina and lists his party affiliation as Democrat. Those records show he last voted in North Carolina’s presidential primaries in March.

However, many on X noted how the political views espoused by the account under Routh’s name were not exclusively pro-Democrat. The account described voting for Trump in 2016 and expressed support for a White House ticket combining the unsuccessful Republican presidential primary contenders Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley.

The account’s most recent post was addressed to Harris, timed in between Trump’s failed 13 July assassination at a political rally in Pennsylvania and when she replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket after the president opted to halt his re-election campaign. The post said the vice-president and Biden should visit two spectators wounded and attend the funeral of a rally-goer slain at the shooting before the attacker was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.

“Show the world what compassion and humanity is all about,” the post said.

Sunday’s suspect was reported to have put the muzzle of a rifle through a fence in a wooded area at Trump International golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday afternoon.

Trump was golfing there at the time. An agent spotted the rifle and fired, prompting the suspect to flee before he was arrested in a neighboring county.