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 aid in the country's war against Russia, an effort he said left him disillusioned.
Authorities have not officially named Ryan Wesley Routh as a suspect and he has not been charged. However, law enforcement sources confirmed to The Times that Routh was taken into custody and had spent time in Hawaii and North Carolina.
According to records, Routh, 58, most recently lived in Kaaawa, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu, but 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 journalist in kyiv that he flew to Ukraine to join the military in the months after Russia's full-scale invasion, but learned he was “not an ideal candidate” for the battlefield because he was over 50 and had no military experience.
Last year, the New York Times quoted Routh in an article about the infighting that hampered the volunteer campaign in Ukraine that began after the Russian invasion. Routh told the paper that he had spent several months in Ukraine, trying to recruit Afghan soldiers to fight — illegally, if necessary, by buying passports from Pakistan. The paper said Sunday that the Routh it interviewed was the person arrested Sunday.
Routh said in the June 2022 interview, which was posted on YouTube, that after being rejected for military service, he began recruiting volunteer soldiers for the Ukrainian army.
Routh described how disappointed he was to learn that not everyone wanted to support the war effort by joining or contributing a few dollars, saying he was “not sure the world is as wonderful as I once thought it was.”
“I’m becoming more and more disillusioned with humanity,” Routh said. “I’m starting to question whether we’re going to end up on the right side of this equation.”
Although Routh had most recently lived in Hawaii, she cast her ballot in Guilford County, North Carolina, in the Democratic primary in March and had voted in nearly a dozen elections there over three decades, voting records show. Her party preference was listed as unaffiliated.
Federal records show Routh's political contributions occurred in just one election: the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
Routh made contributions of 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 support for Gabbard, who later left the Democratic Party and now supports Trump, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris.
In 2020, Routh directed a Twitter post at Trump, writing that Trump had been his “choice” in 2016 and that he had hoped “President Trump would be different and better than the nominee.” Instead, Routh wrote, “You seem to be getting worse and degenerating,” adding, “I’ll be glad when you’re gone.”
This year, Routh wrote in X to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that he should stay in the race against Trump, join forces with Republican Nikki Haley and “never give up.”
Recent social media posts show Routh had been paying close attention to the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler County, Pennsylvania, in July. In one X post directed at Harris, he wrote: “You and Biden should visit the people injured in the hospital from the Trump rally and attend the funeral of the murdered firefighter. Trump will never do anything for them… show the world what compassion and humanity means.”
A person named Ryan Wesley Routh, born the same year as the man arrested Sunday, faces criminal charges in North Carolina spanning several decades. Routh pleaded guilty to grand larceny in the late 1990s and faced a felony charge in 2010 for possession of stolen property, according to court records reviewed by The Times.
In 2002, the Greensboro News & Record reported that after being pulled over by police while driving, Routh put his hand on a gun and 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 was not clear how the charges were resolved.
According to records, Routh moved into a beachfront home in Hawaii around 2018. His LinkedIn profile says he was the owner of CampBox Honolulu, a company that builds storage units and “tiny houses” to house homeless residents.
“As a community, if we could all come together and pool our resources, it would be extremely beneficial,” Routh told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser after donating a tiny house to a planned village to house homeless people on Oahu. “We’re all tired of seeing homeless people all over the island with nowhere to go.”
A woman who said she was Routh's neighbor in Kaaawa said he built the trailer she was working out of and that he is a good carpenter. But, she added, “he is erratic.”
The neighbor, who declined to give her name, cited instances where he allegedly shot her chickens with “a high-powered pellet gun.” He also opened another neighbor's door, she said, and sprayed his dog with a hose, which he said was barking too loud.
“I told him to get out of here because we live in the country and that’s what we have, chickens and dogs,” the neighbor said. She added 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 traveled abroad to volunteer to fight, according to his neighbor and Routh's interviews with various media outlets.
On X, Routh's posts were filled with pleas to major world leaders and celebrities, urging them to aid the war effort.
In one of them he wrote: “I am ready to fly to Krakow and go to the Ukrainian border to volunteer, fight and die.” In another, he said: “I am an American coming to fight with you in Ukraine; I will fly to Krakow and take any transport to kyiv to meet you and fight to the death.”
His neighbor in Hawaii said his trip to Ukraine changed him.
“He came back different,” he said. “That’s when he started shooting chickens and dogs. Before that, he never bothered to do that.”
