Ryan Wesley Routh, the man suspected of plotting an assassination attempt on Donald Trump at his golf course in Florida, left a note months ago confirming that he planned to kill the Republican presidential candidate. The note, which he left in a box given to an acquaintance and which he assumes will fail, also offers a reward for others to try. It was the second known attempt to assassinate Trump after he was shot at a rally last July, which left him with a wound to the ear.
The letter was made public as part of a court document filed by prosecutors seeking to keep Routh in custody. Routh was due to appear in court in Palm Beach on Monday for a preliminary hearing. Addressed to “the world,” it reads: “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but I am sorry that I have failed you. I did what I could and used all the courage I could muster. Now it is up to you to finish the job.”
According to the court document, Routh, a 58-year-old itinerant construction worker with an obsession with Ukraine, had been lurking around the golf course for a month before being spotted outside the Trump International Club, where he had been hiding for about 12 hours. He was carrying a loaded, scoped semi-automatic rifle with spare ammunition, a digital camera that he apparently intended to use to film his actions, and two backpacks filled with ceramic plates. Police are working on the assumption that he intended to use them as bulletproof vests.
Routh had positioned himself facing hole 6, the one closest to the hedge, supposedly to shoot Trump at the closest possible distance. But before the former president got there, a Secret Service agent who had gone ahead to examine the area, as part of the candidate’s protection measures, saw the barrel of the gun sticking out from the bushes and opened fire. The suspect fled the scene in a vehicle, but an eyewitness took photographs of the car and license plate, which made it easier for the police to stop him on the highway, about an hour later.
Police found the suspect’s backpacks, camera, a bag of food and rifle, on which fingerprints were found, abandoned in a hedge.
Among the documents seized from him, the court document says, were his passport, a driver’s license issued in Hawaii and a handwritten note with places and dates where Trump was expected to be between August and October of this year. He also had a notebook with names and contact information of people related to the war in Ukraine, a subject that obsessed him. Routh had traveled to kyiv to try to recruit volunteers to fight on the Ukrainian side and had been very active in the United States in defense of the cause.
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Police also found 12 pairs of gloves and six cellphones in the SUV. One of them had been used to Google how to travel from Palm Beach to Mexico.
While the investigation is underway, the suspect has been charged with illegal possession of a firearm and tampering with it to erase its registration number. The first charge could carry up to 15 years in prison.
The court document states that three days after Routh’s arrest, an acquaintance of his handed over to the authorities a box that the defendant had left with him months before, sealed. Once opened, the box was found to contain, among other things, ammunition, construction material and several handwritten notes, including the letter to the world.
In it, Routh offers a $150,000 reward to anyone who can “complete the job.” He also calls Trump “unfit” to serve as president of the United States. “American presidents must, at a minimum, embody the moral fabric of America and be good, caring and selfless people, always championing the cause of humanity. Trump fails to understand any of that.”
The suspect had a long history of run-ins with the law and police, including possession of stolen property. In 2002, he was charged in Greenboro, North Carolina, where he is from, with possession of a weapon, a “binary explosive with a 10-inch detonator,” capable of causing mass death and destruction. He was found guilty and placed on supervised release for five years.
