'Nonplussed': Sheriff describes Trump assassination attempt suspect's demeanor during arrest

(CNN) — The man suspected of trying to assassinate former President Donald Trump on Sunday depicted himself on social media as a globe-trotting freedom fighter – tweeting at world leaders, traveling to Ukraine to support its war effort, and professing his willingness to die for the causes he believed in.

Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old homebuilder living in Hawaii, told news outlets that he had spent months in Ukraine working to bring foreign fighters to the country from Afghanistan. On Twitter, he implored President Joe Biden to “send every weapon we have to Ukraine” and offered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky advice on military strategy.

But the grandiose image that Routh painted online didn’t seem to match up with his reality. In one interview last year, he acknowledged that he hadn’t secured a single visa for the Afghan fighters he claimed he was ready to send to the country, and a Ukrainian military official told CNN that Routh’s ideas seemed “delusional.”

Away from his keyboard, Routh ran a small company that built tiny homes in a Honolulu suburb, and he spent his time writing letters to his local newspaper about homeless encampments, graffiti on an Oahu highway tunnel, and a dispute about a hiking trail.

And Routh’s tweets to Biden, Zelensky, and other famous figures seem to have been ignored – until he was arrested in Florida this week, after allegedly waiting for Trump with an assault rifle outside the former president’s Palm Beach golf course.

In what appears to be the second attempt to kill Trump in about two months, authorities said a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle barrel with a scope sticking out of a fence while the Republican nominee played a round of golf. The agent opened fire, and Routh allegedly fled the scene by car without firing any shots back. Routh was later detained and has been charged with two counts, including possession of a firearm while a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

Keyboard warrior

In the years before Routh’s alleged assassination attempt, he posted messages online criticizing Trump and showed a deep interest in supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Routh joined X, then known as Twitter, in January 2020, and immediately began posting about politics, according to tweets saved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Routh claimed in a 2020 post that he supported Trump in 2016, but had changed his tune on the former president – writing that “I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment (sic) and it seems you are getting worse and devolving.” More recently, he suggested that Trump’s campaign slogan should be “make Americans slaves again.”

In 2019 and 2020, according to Federal Election Commission records, Routh donated small amounts to the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidates Tulsi Gabbard, Beto O’Rourke, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang. His tweets from the time include Routh calling then-candidate Joe Biden “sleepy Joe,” and criticizing him as someone who “stands for nothing; no plans, no ideas, just as limp as hillary.”

Routh also displayed a sense of self-importance in messages to world leaders as early as 2020, when he tweeted repeatedly at North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. In one tweet, Routh wrote that “I would like to invite you to Hawaii for vacation. We would love to have you here and entertain you… I (am) a leader here and can arrange the whole trip. Please come.”

In the days before and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Routh tweeted dozens of times about the conflict. “I am ready to go to Ukraine and fight and die,” he wrote in one post.

And he tweeted directly at Zelensky, saying, “WE CAN GET THOUSANDS OF CIVILIANS TO JOIN YOUR FIGHT–I am willing to be the example-I WILL FLY FROM AMERICA AND FIGHT WITH YOU… PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO RESPOND.” Zelensky did not appear to respond.

An American in Kyiv

Routh did follow through with his promise to travel to Ukraine, according to interviews with multiple people who met him there, as well as social media photos. But his efforts to support the country didn’t seem to go very far.

According to a GoFundMe page posted by Routh’s fiancée, Kathleen Shaffer, he traveled to the country in April 2022. Photos geolocated by CNN show Routh posing with pro-Ukranian signs, as well as a large number of drones, at Kyiv’s Maidan Square. The GoFundMe page, which has since been taken down, raised $1,865 of its $2,500 goal, which Shaffer wrote would go toward tactical gear, lodging and supplies needed for volunteers. Shaffer wrote that Routh had already “arranged for delivery of 120 drones to the front lines,” though CNN could not verify those claims.

In interviews with the New York Times and Semafor last year, Routh described his efforts to support Ukraine, including by trying to get fighters from Afghanistan to the country. He came off as frustrated by the lack of progress from his work – he told Semafor last year that in his meetings with Ukrainian officials, he had “got yelled at by most everyone.”

A representative from Ukraine’s Land Forces Command foreign legion told CNN that Routh had contacted the command several times but that he was never part of the military unit in which overseas volunteers fight.

“We can confirm this person reached out to us online multiple times. The best way to describe his messages is delusional ideas,” officer Oleksandr Shaguri said. “He was offering us large numbers of recruits from different countries but it was obvious to us his offers were not realistic. We didn’t even answer, there was nothing to answer to. He was never part of the Legion and didn’t cooperate with us in any way.”

Michael Wasiura, a journalist who met and interviewed Routh in Ukraine in 2022, said that after Routh’s efforts to join the country’s International Legion were rejected, he set up a makeshift memorial in Kyiv for foreign soldiers who had died in the war.

“He was out there every single day,” Wasiura said. “Talking to him, it was clear that you were not talking to a normal person. He was, manic might be the right word. He was extremely devoted. He was doing all of this just on his own personal initiative because he cared about the cause and was so extremely devoted to that cause that he’s essentially camping out in a foreign country.”

Evelyn Aschenbrenner, an American citizen who served in Ukraine’s International Legion for two years, told CNN they warned Routh several times to go through official routes to recruit people to fight in Ukraine, but he just wouldn’t listen. Aschenbrenner showed CNN several messages they exchanged with Routh, in which Routh expressed anger with what he saw as Ukraine’s unwillingness to accept his help.

“He seemed to have this delusion of grandeur thing,” Aschenbrenner said. “I’m like, ‘all you’re doing is causing headaches for everybody… the legion already has a recruiting website, there’s no need for you to be doing this.’”

American Ryan O’Leary, an Army National Guard veteran who is fighting in Ukraine and encountered Routh in 2022, described him as being “off.”

“I found him harmless, but not a person who should be in a war zone, as he was all over the place mentally,” O’Leary said.

Last year, Routh appeared to have written a book about the war – “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen-Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the end of Humanity” – and was selling a digital version on Amazon for $2.99. In the book, he decried Trump as an “idiot,” a “buffoon” and a “fool,” and appeared to reference his previous support for Trump by writing, “I am man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake.”

At the same time, Routh also showed support for Taiwan. Routh claimed in online posts to be involved in the “Taiwan Foreign Legion,” a group allegedly recruiting foreign military personnel to fight for Taiwan in the event of a war with China. But several people listed as supporters on the group’s website told CNN they had no knowledge of the legion or its activities, and some had never heard of Routh before.

Newsweek Romania journalist Remus Cernea, one of the people listed on the website, told CNN he met Routh in Kyiv’s Maidan Square in June 2022. Cernea interviewed Routh about his efforts to support Ukraine, and Routh said that “to me a lot of other conflicts are gray, but this conflict is definitely black and white. This is about good versus evil.”

About a year later, Cernea said, he met Routh again and remembered him being visibly frustrated that more foreigners had not come to help Ukraine. Cernea said he was shocked to hear that Routh was arrested in connection with the Trump assassination attempt.

“For me, it’s a surprise, because I viewed him as an idealistic, innocent, genuine person, without any murderous instinct,” Cernea said.

History of volatility

In the years before his international efforts, however, Routh had a history of run-ins with the law in his native North Carolina.

In 2002, the Greensboro News and Record newspaper reported that he had been arrested after barricading himself inside a local business with a machine gun.

Court records show he was charged with felony possession of a weapon of mass destruction, among other charges, and pleaded guilty.

Tracy Fulk, a Greensboro police officer at the time, told CNN that the incident started when she pulled Routh over for a traffic stop. She said she saw a gun in his car, and after she pulled out her gun, he drove away and ran into his business. That led to a standoff with a police special response team, and Routh later surrendered, Fulk said.

“He was a dangerous person,” Fulk said, adding that he was known to local law enforcement. But when he was arrested, she remembered, “he was very quiet and he didn’t really say a whole lot during my time with him.”

In the following years, according to court records, Routh faced a litany of less serious criminal accusations, some of which were later dismissed. He was charged in multiple cases of writing worthless checks, and pleaded guilty to one such charge in 2003. In 2009 and 2010, he was charged with misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance and possession of a stolen vehicle, both of which were dismissed, and he was found guilty of possession of stolen goods, for which he received three years of probation.

The suspected would-be assassin also appeared to have some money problems – judges ordered him to pay tens of thousands of dollars to plaintiffs in various civil suits filed against him, and state and federal authorities have repeatedly accused him of failing to pay his taxes on time.

Routh’s legal problems stand in stark contrast to what appears to be his first appearance in the news: A 25-year-old Routh was painted as local hero in a 1991 Greensboro News and Record article after he reportedly chased down and fought a suspected rapist. Routh received an award from local police for his actions and the newspaper referred to him as a “super citizen if not a super hero.”

More recently, he moved to Hawaii, living near the ocean in Kaʻaʻawa, a town of about 1,200 people on the north shore of Oahu Island, public records show.

Routh, who had previously worked in roofing, started a construction business that built tiny houses. He was featured in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in 2019 for his efforts to house Hawaii’s homeless population. His company’s website, which includes photos and videos of Routh building simple houses out of what appears to be plywood, says its mission was to “produce solutions to our own problems right here on the island.”

A Hawaiian man who gave Routh’s company a bad review on Facebook told CNN he was unsettled by Routh’s response to the criticism. Saili Levi, owner of a vanilla company, said he paid Routh $3,800 up front to build a trailer for his business, but when Levi came to Routh’s shop to review his work, it was shoddy. When he asked Routh to improve the work, Levi said, Routh got angry.

“He just kind of started ranting about, you know, ‘You think because you have money, you’re better than me?’” Levi said. “I kind of decided maybe I should just let it go for the sake of my family.”

Routh also wrote several letters to the editor that were published in the Star-Advertiser newspaper, vowing to donate labor to build houses for homeless people, criticizing a plan to tear down an aging sports stadium as a “looming catastrophe,” and denouncing construction workers for failing to fill potholes.

He even appeared to have considered a run for Honolulu mayor this year. A makeshift “Vote Ryan Routh” website, which lists contact information that matches Routh’s, contains nearly 70 posts addressing Routh’s views on access to historical sites, the island’s housing crisis, his proposed “war on termites” and the nuisance posed by roosters. In the posts, most of which were uploaded this summer, Routh described himself as being sober his entire life, and wrote that he had spent eight months in Ukraine.

“We must push forward with logical leadership that supports the ones that wish to accomplish great things,” Routh wrote in one post. He did not appear on the ballot during the mayoral primary election last month.

Routh’s eldest son, Oran, told CNN via text that Routh was “a loving and caring father, and honest hardworking man.”

“I don’t know what’s happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion,” the younger Routh wrote. “It doesn’t sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent.”

This story’s headline has been updated.

CNN’s Paradise Afshar, Nelli Black, Benjamin Brown, Scott Glover, Lex Harvey, Winter Hawk, Rob Kuznia, Kyung Lah, Daniel Medina, Gianluca Mezzofiore, Rob Picheta, Majlie de Puy Kamp, Sabrina Shulman, Teele Rebane, Adam Renton, and Jessie Yeung contributed to this report.

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