Trump assassination attempt suspect said he had hoped to fight in Ukraine

The man authorities say is being investigated for bringing a gun to a Florida golf course while former President Trump played there Sunday flew to Ukraine in 2022 to help in the country’s war against Russia, an effort that he said left him disillusioned.

Authorities have not formally named Ryan Wesley Routh as a suspect, and he has not been charged. But law enforcement sources confirmed to The Times that Routh was taken into custody and that he had spent time in Hawaii and North Carolina.

According to records, Routh, 58, lived most recently in Kaaawa, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. But he spent decades in North Carolina, where he worked as a roofer and contractor, and where he is registered to vote.

Routh said in a 2022 interview with a Romanian reporter in Kyiv that he flew to Ukraine to join the army in the months after Russia’s full-scale invasion but learned that he was “not an ideal candidate” for the battlefield because he was in his mid-50s with no military experience.

Last year, the New York Times quoted Routh in a story about the infighting that hindered Ukraine’s volunteer drive that began after Russia’s invasion. Routh told the newspaper that he had spent several months in Ukraine, trying to recruit Afghan soldiers to fight — illegally, if necessary, by buying passports from Pakistan. The newspaper said Sunday that the Routh it interviewed was the person arrested Sunday.

Routh said in the June 2022 interview, which was posted to YouTube, that after he was rejected for military service, he began recruiting volunteer soldiers for the Ukrainian military.

Routh described how disappointed he had been to learn that not everyone wanted to support the war effort by joining or chipping in a few dollars, saying he was “not sure that the world is as wonderful as I once thought it was.”

“I increasingly get more disappointed in humanity,” Routh said. “I’m beginning to question whether we’re going to end up on the right side of this equation.”

Although Routh had recently lived in Hawaii, he cast a ballot in Guilford County, N.C., in March in the Democratic Party primary and had voted in nearly a dozen elections there over three decades, voting records show. His political party preference was listed as unaffiliated.

Federal records show that Routh’s political contributions came in one election: the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

Routh made contributions of less than $50 each to the failed Democratic presidential campaigns of Texas politician Beto O’Rourke, California billionaire Tom Steyer, New York universal basic income advocate Andrew Yang and former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

On social media, Routh voiced support for Gabbard — who later left the Democratic Party and now supports Trump — as well as Vice President Kamala Harris.

In 2020, Routh directed a Twitter post at Trump, writing that Trump had been his “choice” in 2016, and that he had hoped that “President Trump would be different and better than the candidate.” Instead, Routh wrote, “it seems you are getting worse and devolving,” adding, “I will be glad when you gone.”

This year, Routh wrote on X to Republican presidential challenger Vivek Ramaswamy that he should stay in the race against Trump, join forces with Republican Nikki Haley and “never give up.”

Recent social media posts show that Routh had paid close attention to the attempted assassination on Trump in Butler County, Pa., in July. In one X post to Harris, he wrote: “You and Biden should visit the injured people in the hospital from the Trump rally and attend the funeral of the murdered fireman. Trump will never do anything for them .... show the world what compassion and humanity is all about.”

A person named Ryan Wesley Routh, born the same year as the man in custody Sunday, faced criminal charges in North Carolina spanning several decades. Routh pleaded guilty to felony larceny in the late 1990s and faced a felony charge in 2010 for possessing stolen goods, according to court records reviewed by The Times.

In 2002, the Greensboro News & Record reported that after being pulled over by police while driving, Routh put his hand on a gun and then barricaded himself inside a roofing company building for three hours. He was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and possessing a “weapon of mass destruction,” a fully automatic machine gun. It was not clear how the charges were resolved.

Routh moved to a beachfront home in Hawaii around 2018, records show. His LinkedIn profile says he has owned CampBox Honolulu, a company that builds storage units and “tiny houses” to shelter homeless residents.

“As a community, if we can all come together and put our resources together, it would be extremely beneficial,” Routh told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser after donating a tiny house to a planned village to house homeless people on Oahu. “All of us are tired of seeing the homeless people all over the island with nowhere to go.”

A woman who said she was a neighbor of Routh’s in Kaaawa said he built her trailer that she used to work from, and that he’s a good carpenter. But, she added, “he’s erratic.”

The neighbor, who declined to give her name, cited instances in which he allegedly shot her chickens with “a high-powered pellet gun.” He also opened another neighbor’s gate, she said, and sprayed a water hose at their dog, which he said was barking too loudly.

“I told him to move out of here because we live in the country and that’s what we have, chickens and dogs,” the neighbor said. She added that she learned from Routh’s partner that he left Hawaii about two weeks ago.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Routh was deeply moved, even going abroad himself to volunteer to fight, according to his neighbor and Routh’s interviews with multiple media outlets.

On X, Routh’s posts were filled with pleas to major world leaders and celebrities, urging them to help the war effort.

In one, he wrote, “I am willing to fly to Krakow and go to the border of Ukraine to volunteer and fight and die.” In another, he said, “I am an American coming to fight with you in Ukraine; I am flying into Krakow and will take any transport to Kyiv to meet you and fight to the death.”

His neighbor in Hawaii said his trip to Ukraine changed him.

“He came back different,” she said. “That’s when he started to shoot the chickens and the dogs. Before that, he never used to bother.”