Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr slammed the Biden-Harris Department of Justice on Monday for releasing a letter from a man accused of trying to assassinate former President Donald Trump last weekend, saying that there was no purpose to doing it other than trying to increase incitement against the Republican nominee.
The DOJ released the letter in court documents as part of the prosecutor’s attempts to keep Ryan Routh locked up in pretrial detention. The judge denied Routh bond on Monday.
In the letter, which was written several months ago and was discovered in a box of items that Routh left with another person, Routh said: “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.”
Barr said in a statement that he was stunned that the DOJ did not redact the letter in court documents.
“I was dumbfounded that the DOJ made public this morning the contents of the letter that, Ryan Routh, left with an acquaintance prior to the attempted assassination of former President Trump,” Barr said. “The letter calls on people to ‘finish the job’ of killing President Trump, attempts to rouse people in incendiary terms to do so, and offers $150,000 to anyone who succeeds. There was no apparent justification for releasing this information at this stage.”
He said that the DOJ had “more than enough evidence” to keep Routh locked up without needing to release the letter.
“Even if DOJ thought it important to provide the letter to the court, it could have redacted inflammatory material or arranged to have the letter submitted under seal,” he said. “It was rash to put out this letter in the midst of an election during which two attempts on the life of President Trump had been made.”
“It served no purpose other than to risk inciting further violence,” he added.
Routh had a criminal history that barred him from owning firearms and Federal Election Commission (FEC) records indicate that Routh donated exclusively to Democrats from 2019-2020 when he lived in Hawaii.
The small-dollar donations, sent through the Democrats’ fundraising platform ActBlue, were earmarked for Democrat presidential candidates Beto O’Rourke, Andrew Yang, Tom Steyer, Tulsi Gabbard, and Elizabeth Warren.
