Donald Trump assassination attempt: What we know about suspect Ryan Routh

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Key Points

Ryan Routh has been charged with gun crimes as investigations into Donald Trump assassination attempt continue.
Routh is a convicted felon who tried to recruit foreigners to fight in the war in Ukraine.
He once supported Trump but later said he had “misjudged” the former US president.

“When is it acceptable to kill another human-being?” wonders Ryan Routh, the man arrested on suspicion of , in the Amazon blurb for his self-published book: Ukraine’s Unwinnable War.

A 58-year-old convicted felon who tried to recruit foreign fighters to Ukraine and has called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “terrorist”, Routh appears to have once supported Trump, reportedly voting for him in 2016.

But by 2020 he was writing on social media that he had “misjudged” Trump and “made a terrible mistake” when it came to the Republican presidential candidate, US media reported.

Routh was charged with two gun-related crimes in a US federal court on Monday (local time), a day after being spotted with a rifle hiding in the bushes at the former US president’s golf course in Florida.

More charges appear likely, but the initial counts — possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number — will allow authorities to keep him in custody as the investigation continues.

It was the that someone has allegedly tried to assassinate Trump — and it was the latest in a long line of potentially violent choices apparently made by Routh.

Who is Ryan Routh?

Originally from Greensboro, North Carolina, Routh appears to have been inhabited by an urgent desire to act.

He was interviewed by Agence France-Presse during a rally in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in April 2022, two months after Russia’s latest invasion of its neighbour.

“Putin is a terrorist, and he needs to be ended, so we need everybody from around the globe to stop what they are doing and come here now and support the Ukrainians to end this war,” he told AFP, one cheek painted in the blue and yellow of Ukraine’s flag, the other in red.

A man wearing a top featuring the US flag standing outside. He has yellow and blue paint on his right cheek and a square of red paint on his left cheek.

Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was arrested after US Secret Service agents “opened fire on a gunman” carrying an AK-47 style rifle near the boundary of Donald Trump’s Florida golf course. Source: Getty / AFPTV

Posts on his X account — which has since been suspended — showed he was willing to “fight and die” in Ukraine, The New York Times reported, and his Amazon book blurb speaks of having thousands of Afghan and Syrian fighters ready to take up arms — if only the US and Ukraine would allow them to do so.

A representative from Ukraine’s foreign legion described Routh’s ideas to CNN as “delusional” and “not realistic,” saying that although he contacted them several times, he was never part of the unit for overseas volunteers.

Ryan Routh – activist or agitator?

Sunday’s attempted assassination was not Ryan Routh’s first run-in with US authorities.

The criminal complaint against him says that in 2002 he was convicted in Greensboro, North Carolina of “possession of a weapon of mass destruction”.

CNN reported that he was arrested after being pulled over by police and allegedly putting his hand on a firearm, then barricading himself inside a business.

In 2010, the complaint shows, he was also convicted of possessing stolen goods.

CNN said he has also been involved in court cases going back to the 1990s, ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in civil suits and accused of failing to pay his taxes on time.

A photo released by the local sheriff’s department on Sunday shows Routh in the moments after his arrest, sunglasses sliding down his face and rumpled T-shirt pulled up to his chest, with his blond hair a mess and his hands cuffed behind his back.

The US flag is often prominent in photos he shared on social media — wearing a shirt with a flag pattern, for instance, or having it sewn onto other items of clothing.

Four men and a woman on an area of grass near bushes. One man is holding up red police tape so another man can step under it

Law enforcement officials outside the Trump International Golf Club after the apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Source: AAP / Lynne Sladky

His urge to take action also appears evident in his current business, which — according to a LinkedIn profile in his name — is a small outfit in Hawaii that builds “simple economical structures to help address the highest homelessness rate in the United States”.

Local media reported in 2019 that he donated one of his cabins to the homeless.

His 291-page self-published book appears to have taken that desire to act and turned it into a rallying cry for people to take up arms in Ukraine.

“I think that the vast majority of advanced civilized society would land on the side that killing a human is generally unacceptable,” he writes, before adding: “If we all are opposed to the unjust random killings of civilians how can we go about our daily lives and not act.”

His eldest son, Oran, told CNN he was a “loving and caring father, and honest hardworking man”.

He said the accusations against Routh in Florida do not: “sound like the man I know.”

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