Trump assassination suspect says he hoped to fight in Ukraine

The man who authorities say is being investigated for bringing a gun to a Florida golf course while former President Trump was playing there on Sunday flew to Ukraine in 2022 to help in the country's war against Russia – an endeavor that he said left him disillusioned.

Authorities have not officially named Ryan Wesley Routh as a suspect, nor has he been charged, but law enforcement sources confirmed to the Times that Routh was taken into custody and that he spent time in Hawaii and North Carolina.

Records show Routh, 58, last lived 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 following Russia's large-scale invasion, but was told he was “not an ideal candidate” for the battlefield because he was in his mid-50s and had no military experience.

Last year, The New York Times quoted Routh in an article about the infighting that hampered Ukraine's volunteer campaign, which began after the Russian invasion. Routh told the newspaper he had spent several months in Ukraine trying to recruit Afghan soldiers to fight – illegally if necessary by buying passports from Pakistan. The newspaper reported Sunday that the Routh it interviewed was the person arrested Sunday.

In the June 2022 interview posted on YouTube, Routh said that after being rejected for military service, he began recruiting volunteer soldiers for the Ukrainian military.

Routh described how disappointed he was to learn that not everyone wanted to support the war effort through a membership fee or a small dollar contribution. He said he was “not sure the world is as wonderful as I once thought.”

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

Although Routh had most recently lived in Hawaii, he voted in the Democratic Party primary in Guilford County, North Carolina, in March and has voted in nearly a dozen elections there over the course of three decades, election records show. His party preference was listed as unaffiliated.

Federal records show that Routh made his political donations in connection with only one election: the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

Routh donated 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 expressed his support for Gabbard – who later left the Democratic Party and now supports Trump – as well as Vice President Kamala Harris.

In 2020, Routh took aim at Trump in a Twitter post, writing that Trump was his “choice” in 2016 and that he had hoped “President Trump would be different and better than the candidate.” Instead, Routh wrote, “It seems you are getting worse and regressing,” adding, “I'll be glad when you're gone.”

This year, Routh wrote on X to Republican presidential challenger Vivek Ramaswamy, telling him to stay in the race against Trump, team up with Republican Nikki Haley and “never give up.”

Recent social media posts indicate that Routh had been closely watching the attempted assassination of Trump in July in Butler County, Pennsylvania. In an X-post to Harris, he wrote: “You and Biden should visit the injured at the Trump rally in the hospital and attend the funeral of the murdered firefighter. Trump will never do anything for them… show the world what compassion and humanity mean.”

A man named Ryan Wesley Routh, who was born the same year as the man taken into custody Sunday, faced decades-long criminal charges in North Carolina. Routh pleaded guilty to theft in the late 1990s and was charged with possession of stolen goods in 2010, according to court records seen by The Times.

In 2002, the Greensboro News & Record reported that after being stopped by police, 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 is not clear how the charges were decided.

Records show Routh moved into a beachfront home in Hawaii around 2018. According to his LinkedIn profile, he owned CampBox Honolulu, a company that builds storage units and “tiny houses” to provide housing for the homeless.

“If we could all come together as a community and pool our resources, it would be extremely beneficial,” Routh told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser after donating a small house to a planned village to house the homeless on Oahu. “We are all tired of seeing the homeless 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, which she worked in, and he was a good carpenter. But, she added, “he's unpredictable.”

The neighbor, who did not want to give her name, cited instances in which he allegedly shot her chickens with “a high-powered air rifle.” He also opened another neighbor's gate and sprayed her dog with a water hose because it was barking too loudly.

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

Following Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Routh was deeply moved and even went abroad himself to volunteer to fight, according to his neighbor and Routh's interviews with several media outlets.

On X, Routh's posts were filled with appeals to major world leaders and celebrities, urging them to support the war effort.

In one he wrote: “I am ready to fly to Krakow and go to the border of Ukraine to volunteer, fight and die.” In another he wrote: “I am an American coming to fight with you in Ukraine. I am flying to Krakow and will take any transportation to Kiev to meet you and fight to the death.”

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

“When he came back, he was a different person,” she said. “That's when he started shooting the chickens and dogs. He had never cared about it before.”