Suspected Trump gunman left letter outlining assassination plan: prosecutors

FLORIDA: Ryan Routh, the man accused of hiding with a gun near former president Donald Trump's golf course with an aim to assassinate the presidential candidate, wrote a letter months earlier in which he described an "assassination attempt" and offered a bounty on the Republican nominee's life, the US prosecutors said. 

Routh, 58, has been charged with two gun crimes after he allegedly pointed a rifle through the tree line on September 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 (1500 GMT) 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.

Authorities have not yet divulged a motive for the incident, which the FBI has said is being investigated as an apparent attempted assassination of Trump ahead of the November 5 presidential election.

In a 2023 self-published book, Routh wrote that Iran was "free to assassinate Trump" for pulling the US out of an international nuclear deal with Teheran during his presidency.