In April of last year, Wisconsin teen Nikita Casap was arrested by Waukesha County authorities, charged with the murders of his mother and stepfather, as part of a larger plot to assassinate President Trump and Vice President Vance.
Federal authorities alleged Casap had written a three-page manifesto titled "Accelerate the Collapse" about how he planned to incite a political revolution, and that Casap had messages and images on his phone related to the assassination of the President and Vice President.
At the time, Casap's classmates claimed he'd been in contact with someone in Russia, and that contact knew of Casap's plan to kill his mother and stepfather, take passports, money, and a car to flee to Ukraine. The murders were allegedly meant to finance Casap's assassination plot. He wasn't the only attempted Trump assassin who had foreign ties. Butler, Pennsylvania, attempted assassin Matthew Crooks and attempted assassin Ryan Routh both had foreign ties.
In January, Casap pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree intentional homicide in Waukesha County Circuit Court. At the time, District Attorney Lesli Boese said she planned to push Judge Ralph Ramirez to deny Casap any chance at parole, and that each charge carried a mandatory life prison sentence.
Last week, Casap was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
🚨18-year-old Nikita Casap was just sentenced to two life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole for kiIIing his parents in an insane plot to assassinate President Trump pic.twitter.com/1n5jljseWV
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 6, 2026
"LIfe sentences have to be imposed," said Judge Ramirez. "And I do impose on each count, one and two, a life sentence. And ... I believe it to be the right thing, I choose to find he’s not eligible for extended release because I do not know ... when and if and whether a profound and significant change can occur,”
Here's more from Spectrum One News:
District Attorney Lesli Boese told the judge Thursday that Casap was too dangerous to ever be released from prison.
Pulling from an interview Casap gave to the FBI, Boese said that Casap and his mother moved to the United States from the Republic of Moldova when Casap was a grade-schooler but he became increasingly addicted to what she called “disturbing websites” as he grew older. She didn’t elaborate, but at one point said he had been researching serial killers and school shootings.
Boese said Casap developed a plan in late 2024 to target Trump with an AK-47 rifle attached to a drone. The teen later decided he wanted to drop explosives on Trump from a drone and then flee by ship to Ukraine, where he planned to hide for a decade, according to the district attorney. Casap told agents he wouldn’t have cared how many people around Trump got hurt during the assassination attempt.
He started talking with two people online who offered to sell him the drone and the explosives. He sent one of them $8,700 in bitcoin from his stepfather Mayer’s account without realizing they were scamming him and there was never a drone or any explosives, Boese said.
Spectrum One also reported that Casap's defense attorney, Paul Rifelj, asked the court to make Casap eligible for parole after 20 years, saying a 2024 car ramming at a German Christmas market triggered Casap, who then decided he wanted to "change the world" by killing a politician.