Man suspected of second assassination attempt on Trump acknowledged plot – prosecutors
The man suspected of making a second attempt on Donald Trump’s life last week acknowledged that was his intention in a note discovered by police, prosecutors wrote on Monday.
“This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you,” Ryan Wesley Routh wrote in the note, which was included in a package he gave to an unnamed witness before his arrest.
Key events
FBI agents also reviewed a book they believe Routh authored in February 2023 called “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen-Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea, WWIII and the End of Humanity”, according to the court document.
In the book, Routh stated that he:
Must take part of the blame for the [person] that we elected for our next president that ended up being brainless, but I am man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake and Iran I apologize. You are free to assassinate Trump as well as me for that error in judgment and the dismantling of the deal. No one here in the US seems to have the balls to put natural selection to work or even unnatural selection.
In a court document submitted today, prosecutors said Ryan Wesley Routh dropped off a box at a witness’s house months prior to making his attempt on Donald Trump’s life.
After learning of Routh’s arrest, the unnamed witness opened the box and contacted law enforcement. Prosecutors say the box contained “ammunition, a metal pipe, miscellaneous building materials, tools, four phones, and various letters.”
One letter was addressed to “The World” and read, in part:
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.
He [the former President] ended relations with Iran like a child and now the Middle East has unraveled.
Man suspected of second assassination attempt on Trump acknowledged plot – prosecutors
The man suspected of making a second attempt on Donald Trump’s life last week acknowledged that was his intention in a note discovered by police, prosecutors wrote on Monday.
“This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you,” Ryan Wesley Routh wrote in the note, which was included in a package he gave to an unnamed witness before his arrest.
Trump leads Harris in Sun belt battleground states, poll finds
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Broadly speaking, there are two groups of swing states expected to decide the presidential election: the Great Lakes states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and the Sun belt states of Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. The closely watched pollsters at the New York Times and Siena College today released new data from three of the latter group, showing Donald Trump preferred by voters over Kamala Harris, albeit to varying degrees. The poll finds the vice-president’s standing is weakest against Trump in Arizona, where she now has a five-point polling deficit after the same pollsters showed her with a five-point lead last month. The race in Georgia is tighter but the tightest state is North Carolina, which has not supported a Democratic candidate for president since 2008.
The survey is the latest sign of the the presidential race remaining in toss up territory two months after Harris took over as the Democratic candidate from Joe Biden. The Times and Siena College poll is just one data point among many others, but if its findings bear out, it would leave the vice-president reliant on the Great Lakes states as well as Nevada, the fourth Sun belt state that was not surveyed, or a single Nebraska congressional district to win the White House.
Here’s what else is happening today:
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The government appears to have dodged the threat of another shutdown, after congressional leaders reached a spending agreement that expires on 20 December, defying Trump’s demands that they also approve legislation to require voters to prove their citizenship when registering.
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Biden honors women’s soccer champions Gotham F.C. at 10.30am ET, then meets with president Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates at 12.20pm before heading to New York City for the UN general assembly.
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Israel has launched a volley of airstrikes at Lebanon today, again raising fears of a regional conflict. You can read out live blog all about it here.
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JD Vance is delivering remarks in Charlotte, North Carolina at 5pm.
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Trump will hold a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania at 7pm.
