Americans who had contact with the suspect in an alleged failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, Ryan Wesley Routh, were so alarmed by his erratic behavior in Ukraine that they alerted U.S. officials, who apparently did very little with the warnings.
Routh, 58, was taken into custody on Sunday while lurking in the trees of Trump National Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, with a rifle while former President Donald Trump was playing a round of golf. Routh was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm in federal court on Monday.
Routh’s record was festooned with an astonishing number of the proverbial “red flags,” including a self-published book in which he urged the terrorist-supporting government of Iran to assassinate Donald Trump. His lengthy record of criminal offenses included possessing a “weapon of mass destruction” – a gun illegally modified for fully automatic fire – in 2002.
Routh was an ardent and active supporter of Ukraine. He traveled there soon after the Russian invasion began in February 2022, at first to offer himself as a foreign recruit for the Ukrainian military and then to recruit others after Ukraine declined his offer of service.
A nurse named Chelsea Walsh told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Monday she bumped into Routh a few times in Kyiv and concluded he was “among the most dangerous Americans she met during her month-and-a-half-long stint in Ukraine.”
Walsh was so alarmed by Routh’s conduct that she says she warned Customs and Border Protection (CBP) about him when she returned to the United States. She gave CPB a notebook in which she described over a dozen foreigners who exhibited disturbing behavior in Ukraine, and Routh was at the top of the list, flagged for “predatory behavior.”
Walsh said she initially regarded Routh as “eccentric, but not dangerous,” an assessment she revised after having sustained contact with him, especially since he kept talking about assassinating world leaders.
Another American with experience in Ukraine, former CIA officer Sarah Adams, said Routh developed a reputation among aid groups as a “fraudster” and “whack job.”
Among other disturbing behaviors, Routh frequently claimed to be recruiting foreign fighters as an agent of the Ukrainian government, when he was not. One of his big obsessions in Kyiv was importing U.S.-trained Afghan soldiers to fight for the Ukrainians.
When Routh falsely claimed he had persuaded the Ukrainian military to accept some of these Afghan volunteers, aid groups began blacklisting him and reporting him to the State Department. Adams herself warned humanitarian organizations in Ukraine to stay away from him and claimed the State Department was worried about Routh perpetrating human trafficking and/or immigration fraud.
“A lot of people were trying to get him to stop his activities, or at least prevent people from falling for his scams,” she said.
Later in 2023, Walsh filed reports with the FBI and Interpol because she learned Routh was once again presenting himself as a recruiter for the Ukrainian foreign legion, this time trying to recruit Syrian refugees. He also claimed he had Iraqis lined up and ready to fight.
“No recruitment from Syria or Iraq! I told you this before! Those countries are banned and for good reason,” an irritated Ukrainian International Legion official snapped at Routh in a November 2022 message.
Routh’s response was: “How about Afghanistan???” His exchanges with Ukrainian officials grew more surly and sarcastic as they continued to reject his offers of assistance.
A large number of Afghan soldiers really did try to volunteer for the Ukrainian foreign legion, including some with impressive military credentials, but the Ukrainians were very reluctant to accept them, in part because they were worried about spies and saboteurs. Language and cultural barriers were also an issue. A few Afghans did make their way into the foreign legion, but they did not earn high marks from their Ukrainian commanders.
A March 2023 article at Semafor about the would-be Afghan volunteers quoted none other than Ryan Routh as an “expert” on the topic. He told Semafor he was head of the International Volunteer Center in Ukraine (IVC), a real organization that later said Routh was not a member, much less its leader or founder. The IVC said it has never “collaborated or communicated with him in any way.”
The left-wing New York Times (NYT) published an article about foreign volunteers in Ukraine in June 2023 and Routh once again popped up as a self-professed recruiter of international fighters. Routh also told the NYT he was working tirelessly to get Afghan soldiers into the Ukrainian foreign legion.
The author of the NYT article, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, reflected on his year-old encounter with Routh on Tuesday. Gibbons-Neff said Routh sounded “ridiculous” at the time, with grandiose plans for “buying off corrupt officials, forging passports and doing whatever it took to get his Afghan cadre to Ukraine,” but he was filled with so much conviction – and had managed to put his names on the lips of so many people in Ukraine and Afghanistan – that he was taken seriously.
A former American member of the administrative staff for the Ukrainian International Legion, Evelyn Aschenbrenner, told the Washington Post on Monday she was not terribly surprised to see Routh turning up at Donald Trump’s golf course with a rifle in his hand.
“There’s a streak of zealotry in him. I knew he was not firing with all pistons,” she said.
Like the others who ran afoul of Routh in Kyiv, Aschenbrenner said he initially pestered her about accepting his supposed “recruits,” and then began falsely passing himself off as a duly deputized recruiter for the Ukrainian military.
“This guy is not a real recruiter. He’s not legit. I don’t know what he’s up to. Just stay away from him – block and ignore and move on,” she recalled telling foreign soldiers who were legitimately seeking to volunteer for Ukraine.
“The cats and dogs on the military bases did more than he did,” she said. “He didn’t get a single bag of buckwheat or rice. He didn’t donate a single sock to the army. As far as I know, he didn’t get a single actual recruit into the Legion.”