Portrait of an erratic character with disturbing links to Ukraine war effort

by WorldTribune Staff, September 16, 2024 Contract With Our Readers

Who exactly is Ryan Routh, the 58-year-old detained Sunday in connection with an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump?

Routh cultivated journalists  in Kyiv regarding what became the would-be assassin’s main obsession, Ukraine’s war with Russia. He also wrote a book, titled “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War.”

Ryan Wesley Routh

In the early 2000s, before becoming involved with geopolitics, he was a roofer in North Carolina who had several run-ins with local law enforcement, including at least one occasion when he was found to have explosive devices in his possession.

In 2016, he was a supporter of Trump, but that support was apparently broken when Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.

In his self-published book, which as of Monday afternoon was still available on Amazon for $2.99, he urged Iran to kill Trump.

His Linked-In page said he started a company in 2018 called Camp Box Honolulu in Hawaii, which builds storage units and tiny houses.

Records from North Carolina show he voted in that state’s Democrat primary this year.

DailyMail Online notes of Routh:

“He has a prodigious online footprint and was interviewed by multiple news organizations as he tried to recruit foreign fighters from Afghanistan to join the war against Russia in Ukraine.

“In the event, most of his work in the war-torn country amounted to putting up flags and joining protests.

“His book sets out his views on the war in rambling prose, describing how he landed in Poland before making his way to the border with Ukraine.

“He put up his tent in Kyiv’s Independence Square to act as a volunteer coordinator but one day returned to find the police had torn it down.

“It includes a photograph of him with chef José Andrés, founder of World Central Kitchen, who delivered thousands of meals to people affected by the war.”

Routh was charged in a West Palm Beach federal court on Monday with two firearms violations.

He was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. He faces additional charges related to the alleged assassination attempt.

Routh smiled and laughed as he talked to his attorney, according to Fox News producers who were inside the courtroom.

Weapon and other items left behind by Ryan Routh.

Routh was arrested after the Secret Service spotted the tip of his semi-automatic weapon pointing out of a bush just a few hundred yards from where Trump was playing at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.

Authorities said he fled the scene, leaving his gun, backpack and scope behind (photo at left).

“He has an extensive rap sheet and appears to dislike Trump and supports liberal causes,” The Washington Times’ Susan Ferrechio noted.

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During his time in North Carolina beginning in the early 2000s, Routh was charged with more than 100 criminal counts, according to NBC News.

When the news about the assassination attempt broke, many former Greensboro law enforcement officers remembered exactly who he was.

“Everybody remembers him from back in the day … everybody’s like, ‘I remember him, I arrested him,’ ” retired Greensboro police officer Tracy Fulk told DailyMail Online.

She noted that Routh was on their radar, especially after he was found with explosive devices.

“We had gotten several barometer reports, or dangerous person notifications just because our bomb team had dealt with him, evidently at some point he had some explosive devices, so we were made aware of him just for safety reasons,” Fulk said.

Routh was known by the Greensboro law enforcement to be armed and a possible threat.

Zero Hedge noted that, when Routh traveled to Ukraine to recruit for its International Legion in 2022 “he was a Western mainstream media darling for a time, having been quoted on behalf of the cause to get more foreign fighters thrown into the battle against Russia by a who’s who of major media sources from FT to Newsweek to the NY Times.”

Zero Hedge continued: “But when he arrived in Ukraine, according to these media reports, the 58-year old Routh himself was considered too old to fight alongside the Ukrainian army. ‘So plan B,’ Routh described to one outlet, ‘was to come to Kiev and promote the idea of many others coming to join the International Legion. We need thousands of people here to fight alongside Ukrainians.’ ”

“There are about 190 countries on our planet, and if the governments are not officially sending soldiers here, then we civilians should pick up this torch and make it happen,” he described. He had told Newsweek in a video interview from Ukraine that the war with Russia was as simple as “good vs. evil” and essentially the same as good guys and bad guys in the Hollywood movies Americans grew up with. It was not a gray conflict, he described, but “black and white.”

While not donating large sums, Routh was most recently a supporter of the Democrat Party and of its 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

Political analyst Scott McKay noted in a Facebook post:

1. The Russians have said for decades that Ukraine joining NATO was a casus belli for them. It would be, for us, as if Mexico joined a military alliance with China.

2. With tanks positioned at the border and Putin threatening war, Kamala Harris went to Munich supposedly to head off the war.

3. She met with Zelensky but not anyone from Russia.

4. And she went on TV and suggested that Ukraine would soon join NATO.

She started that war. Whether she was ordered to by whatever handlers control her and Joe Biden, or out of sheer idiocy on her part (either or both are perfectly plausible), she started it. Any reasonably intelligent and well-meaning American politician could have gone there and headed it off with a modicum of flexibility and diplomacy, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, but she didn’t.

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