Orlando Sentinel

A federal prisoner

- By Krista Torralva Staff Writer

pleads guilty to threatenin­g to kill President Donald Trump.

A federal prisoner pleaded guilty Wednesday to threatenin­g to kill President Donald Trump upon his release from jail.

Richard Jeremy Ware, 42, was in a Florida prison for making threats against past presidents when he wrote a letter this year to Trump, according to court records.

“I am going to murder the United States president Donald Trump,” he wrote, according to the indictment.

Ware wrote that he would kill anyone who interfered with him killing Trump and the president’s daughter, according to court records. Court documents do not specify to which of Trump’s two daughters Ware referred.

“I assure you that I am serious,” he wrote, adding that he was “not afraid to die,” records show.

A correction­s officer read the letter and confronted Ware, who admitted to writing the letter, according to court documents.

Court records show that in November 2011, Ware mailed another letter threatenin­g to kill thenPresid­ent Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and George Bush. In that letter, he also threatened to sexually assault Obama’s daughters. He made similar threats in a series of phone calls afterward to a hotline for reporting rape in prison.

For that, Ware was sentenced to five years in prison and three years of supervised release.

In his letter to Trump, he wrote that he will not comply with conditions of his supervised release. Ware will be sentenced at a later date. He faces another maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.

Mental-health profession­als who evaluated Ware wrote that he is “capable of formulatin­g plans and following through on them.” They concluded that he is “calculatin­g, intelligen­t, paranoid, and very capable of violence,” according to court documents. He also has a history of mental-health issues, records show.

Ware asked to represent himself in court before admitting he has no legal studies or experience.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States