Authorities say the man under investigation for bringing a gun to former President Trump while he was playing at a Florida golf course on Sunday flew to Ukraine in 2022 to help with the country’s war against Russia but became disillusioned with the effort.
Authorities have not formally named Ryan Wesley Routh as a suspect and he has not been charged, but law enforcement sources confirmed to The Times that Routh had been detained and had been staying in Hawaii and North Carolina.
Records show that Rouse, 58, most recently lived in Kaaawa, Oahu, Hawaii, but he spent decades in North Carolina, where he worked as a roofer and contractor and is registered to vote.
In an interview with Romanian journalists in Kiev in 2022, Routh said he flew to Ukraine to enlist in the army a few months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, but found that being in his mid-50s and with no military experience made him “not an ideal candidate” for the battlefield.
Last year, the paper quoted Routh in a story about infighting that hobbled Ukraine’s volunteer recruitment efforts after the Russian invasion. Routh told the paper he had spent months in Ukraine trying to recruit Afghan soldiers for the fight, even buying passports from Pakistan to recruit illegally if necessary. The paper’s interviewer was the person arrested on Sunday.
In a June 2022 interview, Rouse said he began recruiting volunteers for the Ukrainian army after being rejected for military service.
Routh spoke of how disheartened he was to learn that not everyone wanted to support the war effort by joining it or donating a few dollars, saying, “I’m not so sure the world is as good as I once thought it was.”
“I’m feeling more and more disappointed in humanity,” Routh said. “I’m beginning to wonder if we’re ever going to get to the right side of this equation.”
Rouse, who until recently lived in Hawaii, voted in March in the Democratic primary in Guilford County, North Carolina, and has voted in nearly 10 elections in the past 30 years, according to voting records. He was listed as an Independent.
Federal records show Rouse’s political contributions were made to one election: the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
Rouse has donated 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 voiced his support for Gabbard, who later left the Democratic party and now supports Trump, and for Vice President Kamala Harris.
In 2020, Rouse wrote in a tweet directed at Trump that he was his “choice” in 2016 and that he hoped “President Trump would be a better person, different from the candidate he was chosen to be.” But in reality, “you seem to have gotten worse and regressed,” he wrote, adding, “I’ll be happy when you’re gone.”
Earlier this year, Routh wrote to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy urging him to stay in the fight against Trump, join forces with Republican Nikki Haley and “never give up.”
Recent social media posts show that Routh was a sharp critic of Trump in July in Butler County, Pennsylvania. In an X post to Harris, he wrote: “You and Biden should visit the people in the hospital injured at Trump’s rallies and attend the funerals of the firefighters killed. Trump will do nothing for them….Show the world what compassion and humanity are.”
Ryan Wesley Routh, born the same year as the man taken into custody Sunday, had faced criminal charges in North Carolina for decades. According to court records reviewed by The Times, Routh pleaded guilty to felony theft in the late 1990s and was charged with felony possession of stolen property in 2010.
In 2002, the Greensboro News & Record reported that after being stopped by police while he was driving, Routh grabbed a gun and barricaded himself inside a roofing company for three hours. He was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and possessing a “weapon of mass destruction,” a fully automatic machine gun. It is unclear how the charges were resolved.
Records show that Rouse moved to a beachfront home in Hawaii around 2018. His LinkedIn profile says he is the owner of Campbox Honolulu, a company that builds storage units and “tiny homes” to shelter homeless residents.
“It would be so beneficial if we could all work together as a community and pool our resources,” Rouse said after donating a tiny house to a village that will house homeless people on Oahu. “We’re all tired of seeing homeless people across the island with nowhere to go.”
A neighbor of Routh’s in Ka’awa said he built the trailer where she used to work and described him as a good carpenter, but added that “he can be volatile.”
One neighbor, who declined to give her name, cited an instance where the man allegedly shot her chickens with a “high-powered pellet gun,” and said he also opened another neighbor’s gate and sprayed water from a hose at her dog, who she said was barking too much.
“We told him to get out of here because we live in the country and we have chickens and dogs,” the neighbor said, adding that she learned from Routh’s partner that he had left Hawaii about two weeks ago.
After Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Routh was so deeply moved that he volunteered to go overseas to fight, according to his neighbors and in multiple media interviews.
In X, Routh’s posts were filled with pleas to major world leaders and celebrities, urging them to cooperate in the war effort.
“I am prepared to fly to Krakow, go to the Ukrainian border and volunteer to fight and die,” one letter read, while another said, “I am an American who has come to fight you in Ukraine. I will fly to Krakow, take whatever transportation I can to get to Kiev, meet you and fight to the death.”
His neighbors in Hawaii said his trip to Ukraine changed him.
“He came back changed,” she said, “and that’s when he started shooting chickens and dogs. Up until that point, he hadn’t paid any attention to them.”
