According to authorities, the alleged Trump gunman wrote of an “assassination attempt”

The guy who is suspected of hiding out with a gun near Donald Trump’s golf course in Florida in an apparent attempt to kill the former president wrote a letter a month ago about a “assassination attempt” and put a bounty on Trump’s life, U.S. prosecutors said Monday.

It is claimed that Ryan Routh, 58, pointed a rifle through the trees on September 15 while the Republican presidential candidate was playing golf at his West Palm Beach course. He has been charged with two-gun crimes. He hasn’t made a plea yet.

Routh is due in court on Monday at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), where authorities will ask the judge to keep him in jail until his trial. A court document made public before the hearing said that prosecutors said Routh dropped off a handwritten letter to “the world” a few months before the incident that offered a reward for Trump’s capture.

Based on the file, the suspect wrote, “This was an attempt to kill Donald Trump, but I failed you.” “I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.”

prosecutors said the letter was found in a box that was given to them by an unnamed citizen witness. The box also had four phones, ammunition, and a metal pipe inside.

Authorities also said that Routh’s car had a handwritten list of places where Trump had been or was going to be in August, September, and October when he was caught this month. They said that a check of his cellphone records showed that the devices had rung towers near Trump International Golf Course, where the incident happened, and the Mar-a-Lago resort, where Trump lives.

Routh has been charged with having a gun while being a convicted criminal and having a gun whose serial number has been erased. There could be more charges.

The complaint says that a U.S. Secret Service member saw the gun and fired at Routh, which made the suspect run away. Routh was later caught on a Florida highway. According to U.S. officials, Routh did not fire a gun during the fight on the golf course because he could not see Trump, who was several hundred yards away.

Authorities haven’t said what the incident was about yet, but the FBI has said that it is being looked into as a possible attempt to kill Trump before the Nov. 5 election.

Before this, about two months before, someone shot Trump in the ear at a campaign gathering in Butler, Pennsylvania. The Secret Service shot and killed that shooter. The two events showed how stressed the agency was at a time when political threats and violence were on the rise in the US.

Routh was a failing roofer who had a criminal record and most recently lived in Hawaii. He spoke out in support of Ukraine and was asked about his crazy attempts to get Afghans to fight against Russia’s attack.

Routh wrote in a self-published book in 2023 that Iran was “free to assassinate Trump” because the US had pulled out of a nuclear deal with Teheran while Trump was president.

Routh was found guilty in North Carolina in December 2002 of having a weapon that could kill many people or cause a lot of damage. Court records show that he was also found guilty of having stolen goods in 2010.

The criminal charge says that Routh may have been waiting in the area for almost 12 hours, from around 2 a.m. to about 1:30 p.m., when the gun was seen. This was shown by his cellphone data. The lawsuit says that at the scene of the crime, police found a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope, a digital camera, and a plastic bag full of food.