After former President Donald Trump escaped a suspected assassination attempt—again—in Palm Beach County, Gov. Ron DeSantis is doubling down on the need for an independent state-level investigation.
Why? Because he fears that the feds who prosecuted Trump in South Florida are the same ones who will investigate the alleged attack, which DeSantis claims is not the "best thing for this country."
"We believe that there's a need to make sure that the truth comes out in a way that's credible," DeSantis said at an Orlando press conference Monday morning. "Those same agencies that are prosecuting Trump in that jurisdiction are now going to be investigating this. I just think that that may not be the best thing for this country."
He argued that there were "multiple violations of state law," demanding an independent investigation into how suspected would-be shooter Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old North Carolina native and staunch Ukraine supporter, managed to hide outside Trump's Mar-a-Lago golf course and aim his AK-style rifle through the fence links before Secret Service spotted him.
In July, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed special counsel Jack Smith's indictment against Trump, his aide Walt Nauta, and a Mar-a-Lago property manager because she said Smith's appointment violated the Constitution's Appointments Clause. Smith has since appealed the case to a federal court in Atlanta.
Smith charged Trump with three obstruction counts and 37 felony counts for alleged illegal handling and retention of classified documents after he left office in January 2021. A year later, Mar-a-Lago was raided by the FBI, which recovered around 300 sensitive records in what Trump has declared to be a witch hunt and an attempt by President Joe Biden to have him killed.
That case and the latest suspected assassination attempt both centered on Mar-a-Lago, leading DeSantis to question the efficacy of the South Florida federal agencies that will investigate the Sunday afternoon attempt. Unusually, this isn't the first time that conspiratorial questions have circulated on how a shooter could get so close to the former President.
Soon after Trump was shot by would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks in small-town Pennsylvania in July (two days before Cannon threw out the documents case), a special U.S. House Committee convened to investigate the attack that ended with one attendee dead and Trump's ear grazed by a bullet. Florida Rep. Cory Mills then created his own special committee to investigate the security lapses, with many insisting that the Secret Service seemingly ignoring the assassin mere yards away could not be an accident.
In reality, an internal Secret Services inquiry revealed there were a series of massive communications breakdowns leading up to the shooting.
