Man arrested at Trump golf course had a history of crusading for causes

MIAMI — The man arrested after apparently plotting to assassinate former President Donald Trump at one of his Florida golf courses Sunday appeared to tell Iran in a rambling self-published book last year that it was “free to assassinate Trump.”

The self-aggrandizing book, titled “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” along with social media posts and other public statements from the suspect, Ryan W. Routh, reflected his intense desire to fight for Ukraine. He also took a dim view of Trump, referring to him as a “fool,” “idiot” and “buffoon.”

“Democracy has dissolved quickly under our watch,” Routh wrote, describing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as a catastrophe “perpetrated by Donald Trump and his undemocratic posse.”

How Routh, a peripatetic activist and building contractor with an extensive criminal record, came to possess a semiautomatic rifle, learn of Trump’s weekend whereabouts and wait for him on the edge of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, remains unknown.

But a review of public records and Routh’s writings, as well as interviews with people who knew him, suggest that he saw himself as an active and influential participant in momentous world events, while becoming estranged from at least some of his family and nearly destitute in the process.

Routh has been a serial crusader for causes large and small dating back to at least 1996, when he campaigned against graffiti in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he lived for decades. In July, he urged President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the social platform X to visit the victims of the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, writing that “Trump will never do anything for them.”

“Show the world what compassion and humanity is all about,” Routh wrote July 16.

In other social media posts, he tagged world leaders and celebrities including Elton John and Elon Musk, often providing his phone number and email as if expecting a response.

Routh appears to have spent much of his life in Greensboro, a city of about 300,000, though in recent years he had lived in Hawaii.

In December 2002, he was convicted of a felony for “possessing a weapon of mass death and destruction,” according to the criminal complaint. That year, he was arrested in Greensboro after barricading himself inside a building with a fully automatic weapon, according to a local newspaper and Tracy Fulk, a former Greensboro police officer who said she had pulled him over and spotted a gun in his truck before he fled.

“He acted like he had some sort of mental health issues,” she recalled.

Routh’s other criminal charges in North Carolina include possession of a stolen motor vehicle, possession of stolen goods and several driving violations.

Yet records show that he was a concerned citizen interested in local causes.

In the 1990s, he appeared in the pages of a local newspaper as a family man decorating his 1840s log cabin home for Halloween, and as a good Samaritan who won a “Law Enforcement Oscar” for chasing a suspected rapist in his neighborhood.

In 1996, a Greensboro newspaper published a letter from Routh decrying “the ever increasing amount of graffiti” in the city as a “constant reminder of the moral disintegration of our America.”

And two decades ago, he supported his teenage son’s efforts to establish a skate park in Guilford County, North Carolina, which includes Greensboro. Routh helped the teenagers get permission to use a piece of property owned by an oil company.

Routh’s social media posts suggest that he was a Trump supporter in 2016 but had turned against him by 2020. He voted in North Carolina’s Democratic primary this year, records show.

Relatives of Routh in North Carolina and Hawaii did not respond to requests for comment.

This year, Routh and his daughter sold their “dilapidated” home in Greensboro for about $175,000, said David Hagaman, a real estate agent who helped his business associate buy the property.

Many of the 291 pages of Routh’s book are filled with graphically violent and bloody images of soldiers and civilians from a range of conflicts. In one convoluted passage, Routh apologized to Iran for Trump’s dismantling of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal, and then wrote “you are free to assassinate Trump.”

The Associated Press was the first to report on the book.

Weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Routh posted on social media that he was willing to die for the cause and headed to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, shortly after.

Not long after his arrival, Routh was told that he would be of no use on the front line because of his age and lack of military experience, he told The New York Times last year. So he pivoted, hoping to recruit foreign fighters and set up tributes to those killed in battle.

Routh had set up a website called “Fight for Ukraine,” in which he explained how to travel there and join the Ukrainian army as a foreign fighter. For the better part of a year, his main focus was getting hundreds of Afghan soldiers, who had fled after their country’s government collapsed, to fight for Ukraine.

Routh had lofty ideas, some of them illegal, when it came to accomplishing his plans, such as paying officials, forging documents and using U.S. military aircraft to fly Afghans into Poland.

But he was dogged in his approach, according to one soldier who fought with Ukraine and helped officially recruit foreign fighters for Ukraine’s foreign legion.

The soldier, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, said that Routh often offered to provide recruits from the Middle East in exchange for a commission. He added that he was not aware of Routh getting any foreign fighters into Ukraine.

By the summer of 2023, Routh had become frustrated with Ukrainian demands and red tape, and his zeal turned into disillusionment and contempt.

“He started getting a bad taste in his mouth for Ukraine,” said David M. Edwards Jr., a retired U.S. Army ranger and founder of Project Exodus Relief, a group advocating the evacuation of U.S.-trained Afghan military members.

Edwards connected Routh with several Afghan fighters who were trying to leave Kabul but noticed that “something was off,” he said. Ultimately, Routh left the Afghan fighters stranded halfway on their journey to Ukraine, Edwards said.

But one former Afghan soldier, who was one of the first refugees that Routh had tried to help, stayed in touch until just days before Routh’s arrest in Florida on Sunday. The soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was afraid of reprisals, said Routh was living out of the back of his car. In a WhatsApp message to the soldier, Routh sent a picture of his trunk filled with clothes and sleeping items, with the caption “my house.”

He also sent the soldier a picture of his bank account: It only had $68 left.

Still, the soldier said that just days before he was arrested, Routh was still sending money to a friend, an Afghan commando, who was stuck in Kenya and trying to get to Ukraine.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2024 The New York Times Company