LAS VEGAS — A man arrested over the weekend trying to wrestle a gun from a police officer at a Las Vegas rally by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told an investigator that he wanted to kill the candidate, court papers showed on Monday.
Michael Steven Sandford, 19, was arrested on Saturday at the Treasure Island hotel in Las Vegas after trying to disarm the officer, according to Las Vegas police, who said he had been handed over to the U.S. Secret Service.
According to court papers filed on Monday in federal court in Nevada, Sandford told a Secret Service agent that he had driven to Las Vegas from California with the goal of shooting Trump.
He was charged with committing an act of violence on restricted ground and was due in federal court in Nevada on Monday afternoon, Natalie Collins, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said in an email.
It was not immediately clear if Sandford had an attorney.
Sandford had a British driver’s license and claimed to have been in the United States for a year and a half, the documents showed. They did not specify his nationality but said he had lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, after coming to the United States.
“Sandford claimed he had been attempting to kill Trump for about a year but decided to act on this occasion because he finally felt confident about trying it,” according to court papers.
ALEX DOBUZINSKIS