The man being held in connection with what is believed to be a second attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump is a vocal advocate of U.S. support for Ukraine and has a long history of criminal and civil court cases, including a conviction for possessing a machine gun.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was taken into custody after being shot by a Secret Service agent at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday, three senior law enforcement officials said. Routh was convicted in 2002 of possessing a machine gun, a weapon of mass destruction, according to court records.
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In the incident, a 36-year-old man named Ryan Routh was allegedly pursued by authorities before barricading himself inside a roofing business in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Greensboro News & Record reported.
Property records show a Ryan Routh had lived in North Carolina for decades. Until recently, he lived in Ka’aawa, a small coastal community on the east shore of the Hawaiian island of O’ahu. Local authorities did not immediately respond to inquiries about possible contact with Routh.
According to the Greensboro News & Record, after his 2002 arrest, authorities said they found the suspect in possession of a fully automatic machine gun, which matches a criminal court record from North Carolina where Routh was convicted of possession of a weapon of mass destruction.
The records also list convictions for carrying a concealed weapon, possession of stolen property and hit-and-run. In those cases, which include misdemeanor convictions for violations such as resisting an officer and driving with a suspended license, the defendants received suspended sentences and were placed on parole or probation.
No records exist of the time he spent in state prison in connection with those cases in the early 2000s.
More than 100 criminal charges have been filed against Ryan Routh in North Carolina, most of them filed in Guilford County below Greensboro, according to court records. The exact outcome of each case was not immediately clear.
Court records for one Ryan Rouse also list his 2003 divorce and multiple civil judgments after contractors and individuals sued a roofing company he helped run.
Last year, Routh told the publication Semaphore that he was head of an organisation he called the International Volunteer Centre as part of an attempt to support Ukraine’s war against Russia.
Routh expressed frustration with Ukraine over what he said were obstacles preventing the entry of foreign fighters, including Afghan special forces who have volunteered or are prepared to join Ukraine’s war effort.
“Ukraine is a very difficult country to work with,” he told Semaphore. “They’re afraid that everyone is a Russian spy.”
In a 2022 interview with Newsweek magazine, Rouse, then 56, said he was from North Carolina and flew to Ukraine from Hawaii to express his dissatisfaction with U.S. leadership on the Ukrainian issue and called on the U.S. government to do more to support the country.
“This conflict is clearly black and white,” he said. “It’s about good and evil.”
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, after President Trump’s term ended. Trump has promoted a now-debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election, has avoided saying whether he would want Ukraine to win a war with Russia, and has expressed praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There was no immediate indication that President Trump’s stance on Ukraine motivated Routh’s alleged actions on Sunday.
Rouse had previously criticized Trump on social media after he said he would support his first presidential bid.
In June 2020, he posted on X, then known as Twitter: “@realDonaldTrump When you were my choice in 2106, I and the world had high hopes that President Trump would be different and better than the candidate. But we have all been sorely disappointed and you seem to be getting worse and degenerate. Are you retarded? I’d be glad when you’re gone.”
Rouse also used an X to show his support for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), and called President Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe.”
In another post, also from 2020, he said: “Bernie…show them hell…fight to the death.”
Routh’s X account is currently suspended.
Federal Election Commission records also show that Rouse made multiple small donations to the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue while living in Hawaii, including 19 payments ranging from $1 to $25 in 2019 and 2020. ActBlue did not immediately respond to an email request for comment on the donations Sunday night.
On Sunday, Palm Beach County State’s Attorney Dave Aronberg told MSNBC that the federal government will take over the prosecution of the West Palm Beach case, and that any charges will be brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.
He argued that for the case to include an attempted assassination charge, the defendant did not have to fire a shot.
Aronberg said his understanding was that Routh had been “ambushing” Trump before Secret Service agents found him. Routh was aiming at the agents who had fired at him, Aronberg said, though the exact timeline is still unclear.
Aronberg said the suspect was “pretty quiet” and “pretty compliant” after Martin County Sheriff’s traffic units arrested Routh on Interstate 95 north of Palm Beach.