WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: The man accused of hiding out with a gun near Donald Trump’s Florida golf course in an apparent bid to kill the former president wrote a letter months earlier describing an “assassination attempt” and offering a bounty on Trump’s life, US prosecutors said on Monday (Sep 23).
Ryan Routh, 58, has been charged with two gun crimes after he allegedly pointed a rifle through the tree line on Sep 15 while the Republican presidential candidate was playing golf at his course in West Palm Beach, according to a criminal complaint. He has not yet entered a plea.
Routh is due to appear at a hearing scheduled to begin at 11am EDT on Monday in which prosecutors where will ask a judge to keep him in jail until his trial. In a court filing released before the hearing, prosecutors said that several months prior to the incident, Routh dropped off a handwritten letter addressed to “the world” that offered a bounty on Trump.
“This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you,” the suspect wrote, according to the filing. “I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.”
The letter was found in a box handed over by an unidentified civilian witness that also included ammunition, a metal pipe and four phones, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors also said that when Routh was arrested this month his car contained a handwritten list of dates in August, September and October of places where Trump had appeared or was expected to appear. They said a search of his cellphone records showed that the devices had pinged towers near the Trump International golf course where the incident took place and by the Mar-a-Lago resort where Trump lives.
Routh has been charged with possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. More charges could follow.
A US Secret Service agent spotted the weapon and fired in Routh’s direction, causing the suspect to flee, according to the complaint. Routh was later arrested along a Florida highway. US officials have said Routh did not fire a shot during the encounter at the golf course and did not have a line of sight to Trump, who was a few hundred metres away.
