Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, of Hawaii, was identified as the suspect in an attempted assassination of Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump at a golf course on Sunday in Palm Beach, Florida. He was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Routh was critical of the former president, made small donations to a major Democrat PAC, and was an avid Ukraine supporter. He expressed support for Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, but his opinion of Trump appeared to have soured based on his social media posts. Routh has a voting history and a criminal record, including a 2002 conviction for possessing a weapon of mass destruction. He lived in North Carolina before moving to Hawaii in 2018, where he operated a shed-building company with his son. Routh made small political donations to ActBlue and had multiple run-ins with law enforcement over the years. He also had a strong social media presence and was a vocal supporter of Ukraine, even attempting to recruit individuals to fight in the conflict. Routh’s online accounts were removed after the incident, but a book authored by someone with the same name, titled “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen-Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the end of Humanity,” was still available on Amazon as of Monday morning.
One excerpt reads:
“As the Taliban is committing genocide and killing the majority of the Afghan population; we have 5900 Afghan soldiers ready to deploy to Ukraine and we have 10,000 of the Syrian free army (less 67 killed in the earthquake last week) that Ukraine and the US refuses to allow and coordinate them to go and fight in Ukraine.”
Gave Multiple Media Interviews
The New York Times said on Sunday that it had interviewed Routh in 2023 for an article about Americans who were volunteering to help the Ukraine war effort. In that article, he told the paper he’d traveled to Ukraine and spent several months there in 2022 and was trying to recruit Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban to fight in Ukraine.
“A lot of the other conflicts are grey but this conflict is definitely black and white. This is about good versus evil,” Routh said in an interview posted by Newsweek Romania in June 2022. His comments suggested he was in Kyiv at the time.
He also had a website through which he sought to raise money and recruit volunteers to go to Kyiv to join the fight against the Russian invasion. Multiple photos that appear to have been taken in recent years showed him in various places in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Other photos showed him with his hair dyed yellow and blue in an apparent reference to Ukraine’s flag colors.
Encountered Secret Service
On Sunday, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told a news conference that a Secret Service agent on Trump’s security detail engaged with the suspect, who fled the scene, and that members of the agency opened fire at him.
An AK-style rifle, a GoPro camera, and two backpacks were discovered near the golf course’s chain link fence, about 4oo to 500 yards from Trump as he was golfing.
Bradshaw said a witness also saw a man jumping out of the bushes and fleeing in a black Nissan. The car was pulled over about 50 miles north of the golf course, the Marion County sheriff’s office said.
Arrested by Sheriff on I-95
Martin County Sheriff Martin D. Snyder told reporters on Sunday that a section of Interstate 95 was shut down while officials took Routh into custody, describing police maneuvers used to stop him.
In describing Routh, the sheriff said that he appeared calm and asked no questions about why he was being detained during the arrest on I-95.
Has a Son Who Spoke to the Media
Routh’s son, Oran Routh, told CNN on Sunday evening that he was “a loving and caring father, and 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,” he said.
The younger Routh also told the Daily Mail that his father doesn’t like Trump. He reiterated that his father isn’t a violent person.
“He’s my dad and all he’s had is a couple traffic tickets, as far as I know,” the son told the tabloid. “That’s crazy. I know my dad and love my dad, but that’s nothing like him.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.