British Man Sentenced Over Plot to Kill Trump

A British man who confessed to plotting to kill Donald Trump has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal custody for trying to grab a police officer's gun at a rally in Las Vegas earlier this year. Michael Steven Sandford, a 20-year-old who has been diagnosed with autism, pleaded guilty in September to being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and to impeding and disrupting the orderly conduct of government business and official functions, charges that could have sent him to prison for 20 years if the case had gone to trial, the Guardian reports. The BBC reports that Sandford was tearful as he apologized in court for what he had done and for costing the taxpayers money. "I just feel terrible about it," he said.

"You have a medical problem. You should not be ashamed or embarrassed about it. You need medication," the judge told Sandford. "You're not evil or a sociopath like a lot of people we have. I don't think you wanted to kill anybody. This was just some crazy stunt that your mind told you to do." According to court papers, Sandford was in the US illegally on an expired tourist visa at the time of the June 18 rally. After he was arrested for trying to grab the officer's gun, he told Secret Service agents he had driven there from California to kill Trump. With credit for time served and good behavior, Sandford will probably be out of prison and deported back to Britain in another four months, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. (He told agents he was prepared to die during the assassination attempt.)