Failed assassin offered $150k bounty for killing Trump

The man who planned to kill US presidential candidate Donald Trump left a letter urging someone else to carry out the assassination in case he failed, federal prosecutors have revealed.

Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was arrested on September 15 after being spotted at a Trump golf course in Florida. Police found a Soviet-made rifle, a GoPro camera and a backpack with armor plates in his makeshift hideout.

“This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job,” said the handwritten note Routh allegedly left in a box at someone’s home.

A photograph of the note was included in the court filing by the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, made public on Monday. Federal prosecutors included the note as evidence that Routh should remain in jail pending trial. 

According to the filing, Routh had left a box at the home of an unnamed individual in the weeks preceding his attempt to kill Trump. The person opened the box following Routh’s arrest and alerted the authorities last week, the Department of Justice said.

In addition to the handwritten note, the box contained “ammunition, a metal pipe, miscellaneous building materials, tools, four phones” and several other letters. 

The court filing also revealed that six cell phones were found in Routh’s car when he was arrested, including one with a Google search on how to travel from Palm Beach County to Mexico. The Nissan SUV had false license plates, according to the FBI.

Other evidence found in the car included a list of venues where Trump was scheduled to appear with dates in August, September and October, as well as a notebook allegedly “filled with criticism of the Russian and Chinese governments and notes about how to join the war on behalf of Ukraine,” according to the New York Post.

Routh had spent much of the past three years in Ukraine, claiming to a variety of Western media outlets that he was fundraising and recruiting for Kiev’s war effort. The rifle found in his hideout at the Trump International golf club in West Palm Beach was an SKS semi-automatic, loaded with 11 rounds and one more in the chamber. Its serial number was “obliterated and unreadable.”

Trump had narrowly escaped death almost exactly two months prior, on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania. A 20-year-old man fired off at least eight shots from a rooftop as the Republican candidate held a rally, nicking Trump’s ear and killing one audience member, while seriously wounding two others. The would-be assassin, Thomas M. Crooks, was killed by the US Secret Service and his body quickly cremated. His social media accounts have been scrubbed and the FBI has offered no information about his motive or connections.

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