A 58-year-old man charged with trying to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump admitted in a pre-written note that he planned the attack — and even predicted its failure, offering $150,000 to anyone who could “finish the job,” according to a federal court filing Monday.
The man, Ryan W. Routh, had been staking out Mr. Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla., for a month before the incident, according to the filing. He positioned himself outside the fence at the course’s sixth hole on Sept. 15, before a Secret Service agent guarding a hole ahead of the former president’s group spotted him and the barrel of his gun.
By the time he was spotted, Mr. Routh had lined up directly on the sixth hole, intending to shoot Mr. Trump at relatively close range with a semiautomatic rifle, prosecutors said. The rifle, equipped with a scope and left at the scene, had one bullet in the chamber and a total of 11 rounds of ammunition.
“I did my best and showed all the determination I could muster,” Routh wrote in a note placed in a box left at a friend’s house and found by investigators after his arrest. “It’s up to you to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to the person who does.”
In the note, Mr. Routh also wrote that Mr. Trump was unfit to be president. Mr. Routh had left the note at home several months before the shooting, indicating that he had been planning the assassination for a long time.
Mr. Routh was scheduled to appear before a federal judge in West Palm Beach on Monday morning for a detention hearing.
Prosecutors filed the new information in a memo written to convince a federal judge to detain Mr. Routh indefinitely while he awaits trial on two counts of weapons. The filing paints the clearest portrait yet of a roving, impoverished entrepreneur who has repeatedly said he was willing to die defending Ukraine.
Law enforcement officers searching Mr. Routh’s Nissan SUV found “a handwritten list of dates in August, September and October 2024 and locations where the former president had appeared or was believed to be present,” the memo said.
Agents also found six cellphones, including one containing a Google search for how to travel from Palm Beach County to Mexico, 12 pairs of gloves, a Hawaiian driver’s license in Mr. Routh’s name and a passport.
