Suspect in Trump Assassination Attempt Identified: Live Updates

A few months after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Routh traveled to Kyiv in an attempt to help Ukraine defend itself. Prior to going, he had expressed a willingness to fight and die for the cause. While in Ukraine, he gave an interview about his efforts to Newsweek Romania:

He also spoke with the New York Times in March 2023 about his efforts to recruit fighters. The paper identified him as “a former construction worker from Greensboro, North Carolina”:

With Legion growth stalling, Ryan Routh, a former construction worker from Greensboro, N.C., is seeking recruits from among Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban. Mr. Routh, who spent several months in Ukraine last year, said he planned to move them, in some cases illegally, from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine. He said dozens had expressed interest.

“We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan, since it’s such a corrupt country,” he said in an interview from Washington.

It is not clear whether he has succeeded, but one former Afghan soldier said he had been contacted and was interested in fighting if it meant leaving Iran, where he was living illegally.

According to a now suspended Twitter/X account which appeared to belong to Routh, he voted for Trump in 2016, then supported Biden in 2020, after initially supporting Tulsi Gabbard in the Democratic primaries.

Here’s a June 2020 tweet directed at Trump:

While you were my choice in 2106, I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving; are you retarded; I will be glad when you gone

In the last tweet he send with his account, days after the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, Routh asked Kamala Harris to visit the victims of the attack:

You and Biden should visit the injured people in the hospital from the Trump rally and attend the funeral of the murdered fireman. Trump will never do anything for them….show the world what compassion and humanity is all about.

The Times reports Routh also may have been involved in a previous incident involving a firearm more than two decades ago:

A man with the same name and similar age as Mr. Routh was arrested in 2002 in Greensboro, N.C., after barricading himself inside a building with a fully automatic weapon, according to the Greensboro News & Record newspaper. The newspaper said the man was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and possession of a fully automatic machine gun. It is not clear how the charges were resolved.