While based in Ukraine, Routh tried recruiting Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban to fight the Russians.
The suspected gunman accused of attempting to assassinate former president Donald Trump at his Florida golf club on Sunday afternoon has a long history of run-ins with police, including barricading himself inside his own North Carolina business with a machine gun, and appears to have also traveled to Ukraine in 2022 to support the war effort.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was detained by Secret Service in the vicinity of Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club on Sunday after an agent spotted a rifle barrel sticking out of the bushes and opened fire on the would-be assassin.
Routh, who was identified to the Associated Press by law-enforcement sources, seems to have reinvented himself as a Ukrainian resistance fighter and booster after a career in construction and a long history of traffic offenses and petty crimes. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Routh began posting on social media about his willingness to fight and die for the country.
“I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER AND FIGHT AND DIE,” Routh wrote on X.
A short time later, the suspected gunman appears to have traveled to Kyiv, writing on social media that he was there to fight the Russians. While in Ukraine and after returning home, Routh gave interviews to various prominent U.S. media outlets describing his efforts to recruit foreign fighters to serve in the Ukrainian armed forces.
After living most of his life in Greensboro, N.C., Routh moved several years ago to Hawaii, where he owned and operated a shed-building business, Camp Box Honolulu. Before that, he worked in construction.
In December 2002, Routh appears to have been involved in an armed standoff with police after a traffic stop. According to an online news account, Routh was pulled over by Greensboro police around 1 a.m. on December 15 of that year. During the traffic stop, he put his hand on a firearm and then fled the scene, driving to United Roofing, which he owned and led at the time, where he barricaded himself inside for three hours.
Court records indicate he was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, possessing a weapon of mass destruction in the form of a fully automatic machine gun, driving with a revoked license, and resisting, delaying, and obstructing a police officer. North Carolina considers explosives, incendiary devices, mines, and firearms capable of fully automatic fire as weapons of mass destruction.
Routh’s rap sheet is also filled with lesser offenses. According to online court records, he was cited as early as 1983 for speeding, driving without a license, a red-light violation, and failure to report an accident. Court records show that he has been cited dozens of times since the early 1980s for driving without a license, driving with expired or revoked tags, and operating a motor vehicle without insurance.
In the following years, he was charged several times with passing worthless checks, possession of stolen goods, and possession of a stolen vehicle.
A vocal Ukraine supporter, Routh traveled to Kyiv in 2022 and stayed for several months, the New York Times reported in an article published last year about American civilian involvement in the war effort. While in Ukraine, he sought to recruit Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban to fight in the Russia-Ukraine war. The supposed recruitment effort was meant to add members to groups like International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, a military unit composed of foreign fighters.
Routh reportedly tried transferring the Afghan recruits from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine. But Ukraine has turned down such requests.
In addition to the Times interview, Routh also discussed his supposed efforts on behalf of Ukraine in interviews with Newsweek Romania and Semafor.
“Most of the Ukrainian authorities do not want these soldiers,” Routh told Semafor in 2023 as head of the International Volunteer Center in Ukraine. “I have had partners meeting with [Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense] every week and still have not been able to get them to agree to issue one single visa.”
In the Newsweek interview, Routh cast the conflict as a simple battle between “good and evil” and called for the whole world to come together to deter Russian aggression.
While it’s unclear exactly how he spent his time in Ukraine, Routh claimed on social media that he visited Kyiv to fight.
In a February 2022 tweet, he wrote, “I am ready to go to Ukraine and fight and die for the kids and families of Ukraine, we all cannot sit around and do nothing. We need to flood Ukraine with citizens from around the globe for a massive civilian army. Someone respond to me and let’s do it.” In a subsequent tweet, he called for sanctions against Russia.
Routh has also been a staunch supporter of defending Taiwan against China, according to his now-scrubbed X profile. His Facebook account was also deleted in the aftermath of the assassination attempt.
As for his political views, Routh appears to support the Democratic Party: Since the 2020 presidential election, he made at least 19 separate contributions to the Democrat-affiliated super PAC ActBlue.