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By Alia Shoaib
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The man accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump at a golf course last month wrote a strange message about failing to kill Trump in a letter written several months before the incident.
Ryan Routh was arrested on September 15 after being found with a firearm at Trump International Golf Club where the former president was playing golf.
After his arrest, a civilian contacted law enforcement to inform them that Routh had dropped off a box at his residence several months prior to the incident, according to a court filing from prosecutors.
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Upon opening the box, the person discovered a handwritten note which Routh had allegedly written, addressed to "The World," in which he described failing to assassinate Trump.
The note read: "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."
It is unclear whether Routh wrote this note knowing the assassination attempt would fail, or whether he was referring to another, previously unknown assassination attempt.
The witness said that the box also contained "ammunition, a metal pipe, miscellaneous building materials, tools, four phones, and various letters."
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Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance pointed to this strange discrepancy in a recent episode of The Cafe Insider podcast.
"I mean the timing is a wee bit weird, I'll be interested to see how the evidence plays out, the letter is a little bit older than this effort," Vance said.
"But once you've got it in writing that this was his intent, I don't think it's difficult to infer that that intent continued when he showed up at Donald Trump's golf course, right, with firearms."
Journalist Joshua Philipp also noted the strange timing of the letter while appearing on his podcast Crossroads.
"Maybe he believed he would fail, maybe he didn't want to do this in the first place, he just wanted to write this thing," Philipp said.
"The more likely case is this was a kill-switch, kind of a contingency plan if he did fail, and he'd be able to send this message to the world, so to speak."
In an emailed to Newsweek, spokesperson Peter Carr from the Department of Justice said: "At this stage of the case, we are limited to what is included in the factual proffer in support of pretrial detention."
He pointed to the court filing in which details about the note was published.
Routh was initially arrested on two firearm charges, and was later charged with attempted assassination, assaulting an officer and another firearm charge. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge who threw out Trump's classified documents case, is overseeing Routh's case.
She has set a rapid trial schedule, which is due to begin on November 18 in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Routh has previously been arrested eight times for various reasons, mainly for minor offenses.
While a motive for the assassination attempt is yet to be determined, he was strongly critical of Trump's foreign policy decisions in the same note in which he described the failed assassination attempt.
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