A man with a long criminal history, who allegedly led a sketchy campaign to support Ukraine’s war effort, is suspected of being behind the second apparent attempt on Donald Trump‘s life.
The former U.S. president was unharmed in the incident, which took place at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Sunday. U.S. Secret Service agents were scoping out the next few holes on the course ahead of where Trump was playing golf when they spotted a man pointing an AK-style rifle in the bushes.
The Secret Service opened fire on the gunman, who dropped his weapon and fled in a vehicle. Authorities were able to track him down with the help of a witness who took a picture of the getaway car, according to Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw.
Shackled and clad in a blue jumpsuit, Ryan Wesley Routh stood before a federal court on Monday, and was charged with possession of a firearm while a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. The 58-year-old was previously identified by several law enforcement sources as the man detained in connection with the apparent assassination attempt.
Donald Bowser, a Canadian conflict researcher who met the suspected gunman, said he came across as “crazy” when he encountered him in the streets of Kyiv in 2022. Routh allegedly lied about being a recruiter for the Ukrainian military and had negative interactions with people legitimately volunteering in the war effort, Bowser told Global News.
Investigations into the incident are ongoing and Routh may be charged with more crimes in the coming days. His detention hearing is scheduled for Sept. 23 and his arraignment is set for Sept. 30.
Routh, who once said he supported Trump before disavowing the Republican politician, has a complicated history, told through social media posts and court records throughout the years. Here’s what we know about him.
Criminal history
Routh was convicted in 2002 of possessing a weapon of mass destruction, officials confirmed at a news conference Monday afternoon.
The weapon was reportedly a fully automatic machine gun, according to a 2002 Greensboro News & Record article. Routh was arrested with the weapon after a three-hour standoff with police after he barricaded himself inside a roofing business that he owned. The then-36 year old was initially pulled over for a traffic stop, but when the officer approached, he put his hand on a firearm and sped away.
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Other court records show Routh was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon, possession of stolen property and a hit-and-run in various other cases, according to NBC News. The FBI said Monday that Routh was the subject of “numerous” felony charges for stolen goods between 1997 and 2010.
Routh has also been involved in a number of court cases since the 1990s, with authorities accusing him of failing to pay taxes on time and judges in various civil cases ordering him to pay tens of thousands to plaintiffs, CNN reports.
He moved to Kaaawa, Hawaii, in 2018 where he and his son operated a company building sheds, according to an archived version of the webpage for the business.
Routh’s eldest son, Oran, told CNN that his dad is a “loving and caring father, and an honest hardworking man.”
“I don’t know what’s happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion, because from the little I’ve heard it doesn’t sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent,” Oran said.
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Jeffrey Veltri, FBI special agent in charge of the Miami field office, told reporters Monday that while in Hawaii, Routh was the subject of a 2019 tip that “alleged he was a felon in possession of a firearm.”
The FBI interviewed the complainant but was unable to verify the allegation, Veltri said, and the information was passed along to Honolulu police.
Social media posts
Routh appears to be a former Trump supporter who soured on the Republican politician after his four-year term, according to posts he made on a now-suspended X account.
“I will be glad when you (are) gone,” Routh added.
Routh appeared to throw his support behind Senator Bernie Sanders, who attempted to gain the Democratic nomination in 2020 before dropping out and endorsing now-President Joe Biden.
“Bernie…. give them hell….. fight to the death,” Routh wrote in another post. Routh also mocked Biden as “sleepy Joe.”
In an apparently self-published book in 2023, Routh urged Iran to assassinate the former President.
“You are free to assassinate Trump,” Routh wrote in the book, titled Ukraine’s Unwinnable War. He also described Trump as a “fool” and “buffoon” for both the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot and the “tremendous blunder” of leaving the Iran nuclear deal.
“Can you give me a price please,” Routh asked.
Support for Ukraine
Routh told the publication Semafor in 2022 that he was in Kyiv, helping to recruit foreign soldiers for the Ukrainian military effort against Russia. However, the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Ukrainian Ground Forces Command says he never served in the Ukrainian army nor collaborated with the military in any capacity.
Over the past two-and-a-half years, Routh has periodically contacted the international legion with what spokesperson Oleksandr Shahuri described as “nonsensical” and “delusional” ideas about the war effort.
Donald Bowser, a Canadian researcher who specializes on Ukraine for GIST Research, a company focused on peacekeeping and international relief for conflict areas, says Routh was just one of many “characters” who showed up in Ukraine after the outset of the war. Routh was photographed at rallies in Kyiv by international media outlets.
“In the summer of 2022, I was walking with my wife down on the lovely main square of Kyiv in the Maidan, and we saw a guy who looked like a homeless person wearing a sandwich board that was recruiting for the Ukrainian military,” Bowser told Global News. “That’s when I encountered Mr. Routh.”
Bowser, who has lived on and off in Ukraine for the past 34 years, said he saw a huge influx of people with no real combat or logistics experience come to Ukraine after the war broke out in February 2022. He described Routh as one of those people who “tried to attach themselves to the conflict.”
“I just asked him what he was trying to do and he said that he was recruiting. He was authorized to recruit soldiers for the Ukrainian army … and (was) putting up posters with his contacts,” Bowser said. “He had set up a website in which he had listed a number of units that he said that he was affiliated with and that he was busy trying to recruit for.”
Bowser called some of the military units listed on Routh’s website and asked if they were associated with the man.
“The response was no,” Bowser said.
Despite this, Routh charged people brokerage fees in order to put them in contact with Ukrainian military units, Bowser said.
“He was charging US$1,200 to $3,000,” Bowser estimated. “A lot of people didn’t pay the fee, but some did, and you only need to be successful a number of times.”
Bowser says there’s still a large number of people who travelled to Ukraine at the start of the war, intent on helping the military effort, with no means to support themselves in the country.
“So that means that while you’re in Ukraine, you have to raise the money to support yourself. That’s either coming from donations or a variety of sort of scams that you have going,” Bowser explains.
On top of this, Bowser said Routh had a “number of interactions with Ukrainian volunteers that were negative” and he was “harassing people who were trying to do work.”
Bowser isn’t surprised that Routh ended up at the centre of scandal and said that policymakers need to do more to address people being radicalized online and offline related to the Ukrainian case.
“They want to feel involved,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time until somebody snaps and tried an act of terrorism.”
—With files from Global News’ Jackson Proskow and Sean Boynton, the Associated Press and Reuters
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