The man arrested Sunday at a Florida golf course for allegedly plotting to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump told Iran in a self-published book last year that it was “free to assassinate Trump.”
The self-praising book titled “Ukraine's Unwinnable War”, as well as the suspect Ryan W. Routh's social media posts and other public statements reveal his strong desire to fight for Ukraine. He also had a negative opinion of Mr. Trump and called him a “fool”, “stupid” and “moron”.
“Democracy has been eroded at a rapid pace during our time in office,” Mr. Routh wrote, describing the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as “a catastrophe perpetrated by Donald Trump and his undemocratic cronies.”
How Mr. Routh, an itinerant worker and building contractor with a lengthy criminal record, came to possess a semiautomatic rifle, how he learned of Mr. Trump’s weekend whereabouts and how he waited for him along the shore of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, remains unknown.
But a review of public records and Mr. Routh’s writings, as well as interviews with people who knew him, reveal that he saw himself as an active and influential participant in important world events, even as he became estranged from some of his family members and nearly destitute in the process.
Mr. Routh has been a relentless crusader for issues large and small since at least 1996, when he campaigned against graffiti in Greensboro, N.C., where he lived for decades. In July, he wrote on the social media platform X urging President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to meet the victims of an assassination attempt against Mr. Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, writing that “Trump will never do anything for them.”
“Show the world what compassion and humanity is,” Mr. Raut wrote on July 16.
In other social media posts he tagged world leaders and celebrities such as Elton John and Elon Musk, often giving his phone number and email, as if he were expecting a response.
Mr. Routh appears to have spent most of his life in Greensboro, a city of about 300,000, though in recent years he lived in Hawaii.
According to the criminal complaint, he was convicted of a felony in December 2002 for “possessing a weapon of mass death and destruction.” That year, he was arrested after barricading himself inside a building in Greensboro with a fully automatic weapon, according to a local newspaper and a former Greensboro police officer, Tracy Fulk, who said she stopped him and saw a gun in his truck before he fled.
“He acted like he had a mental health problem,” she recalled.
Mr. Routh’s other criminal charges in North Carolina include possession of a stolen motor vehicle, possession of stolen goods, and numerous driving violations.
Yet records show that he was an informed citizen and was interested in local issues.
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 guy who won a “law enforcement Oscar” for pursuing a suspected rapist in his neighborhood.
In 1996, a Greensboro newspaper published a letter from Mr. Routh in which he denounced the “growing amount of graffiti” in the city, calling it a “constant reminder of the moral disintegration of our America.”
And two decades ago, he supported his teenage son’s efforts to install a skate park in Guilford County, North Carolina, which includes Greensboro. Mr. Routh helped the teenagers get permission to use a piece of property owned by an oil company. One of the skaters, Will Millson, now 36, recalled in an interview on Monday that Mr. Routh taught the boys how to bend plywood to make a quarter pipe.
Mr. Millson said Mr. Routh was an active father who wanted his three children to be self-sufficient and productive. Mr. Routh's daughter ran a small T-shirt printing business. He wanted his skateboarding son “to be more involved in doing things for himself, and be productive,” Mr. Millson said.
Mr Millson also worked with Mr Routh's son at Mr Routh's roofing company. He said the company had about 70 employees and three project managers.
“I didn’t think he was really political,” Mr. Millson said after learning of Mr. Routh’s arrest.
Mr. Routh’s social media posts show he was a Trump supporter in 2016 but had turned against him by 2020. Records show he voted in North Carolina’s Democratic primary this year.
Mr. Routh's relatives in North Carolina and Hawaii did not respond to requests for comment.
This year, Mr. Routh and his daughter sold their “dilapidated” home in Greensboro for about $175,000, said real estate agent David Hagman, who helped his business associate buy the property.
In Hawaii, Mr. Routh built storage units and tiny homes. Tomas Baggio, 32, credited Mr. Routh with building him and his wife a 120-square-foot home in 2021 for $14,000, a fraction of the price other contractors quoted him.
“If it weren’t for him, my wife and I wouldn’t have a place to live right now,” Mr. Baggio said.
Vanilla Farm owner Sally Levy hired Mr. Routh to build a small “shop on wheels” so they could easily transport their products to farmers' markets. Mr. Levy found Mr. Routh a “scattered” man who was unable to accept responsibility.
Mr. Levy said Mr. Routh’s work was substandard, and after a verbal argument between the two about that, Mr. Levy received an email containing bitter insults and mention of Mr. Routh’s involvement in international conflicts.
Mr. Routh wrote, “I spent 5 months in Ukraine last year, and 3 months this year, and 2 weeks in DC and 2 weeks in Taiwan volunteering and trying to supply thousands of Afghan soldiers to help win the war.”
“I'd probably be happier dying on the front lines than dealing with rich people in fancy cars driving old broken-down cars and hoping to keep their accounts out of the negative and have food to eat,” he said. “At this rate China and Russia will definitely win.”
Many of the 291 pages of Mr. Rauth's book are filled with violent and bloody images of soldiers and civilians from various conflicts. In one complex passage, Mr. Rauth quotes Mr. Trump's apology to Iran for scrapping the Obama administration's nuclear deal, and then writes “You are free to murder Trump.”
The Associated Press first reported on the book.
A few weeks after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Mr. Routh posted on social media that he was willing to die for the cause and left for the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, shortly afterward.
Shortly after his arrival, Mr. Routh was told that he would be of no use on the front lines because of his age and lack of military experience, he told The New York Times last year. So he changed his path, hoping to recruit foreign fighters and pay tribute to those who died in the war.
Mr. Routh created a website called “Fight for Ukraine” on which he explained how to go there and join the Ukrainian army as a foreign fighter. For most of a year, his main focus was recruiting hundreds of Afghan soldiers who had fled after their country's government collapsed to fight for Ukraine.
Mr. Raut had big ideas when it came to carrying out his plans, some of them illegal, such as paying officials, falsifying documents and using a US military aircraft to fly Afghans to Poland.
But he was firm in his approach, according to a soldier who fought alongside Ukraine and helped officially recruit foreign fighters for Ukraine’s Foreign Legion.
The soldier, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, said Mr. Routh often offered to recruit from the Middle East in exchange for commissions. He said he was not aware of Mr. Routh bringing any foreign fighters to Ukraine.
By the summer of 2023, Mr. Rauth had grown frustrated with Ukrainian demands and red tape, and his enthusiasm turned to disillusionment and contempt.
“He started to get a bad feeling about Ukraine,” said David M. Edwards Jr., a retired U.S. Army Ranger and founder of Project Exodus Relief, a group that advocates for the removal of American-trained Afghan military members.
Mr. Edwards connected Mr. Routh with several Afghan fighters who were trying to leave Kabul, but he noticed “something was wrong,” he said. Eventually, Mr. Routh stranded the Afghan fighters mid-way on a trip to Ukraine, with no support or money to return to Afghanistan, Mr. Edwards said.
But a former Afghan soldier who was one of the first refugees Mr. Routh tried to help kept in touch until days before Mr. Routh’s arrest in Florida on Sunday. The soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution, said Mr. Routh was living in the back of his car. In a WhatsApp message to the soldier, Mr. Routh sent a photo of his trunk filled with clothing and sleeping items, with the caption “My house.”
He also sent the trooper a picture of his bank account: It had just $68 left.
Still, the soldier said that just days before he was arrested, Mr. Routh had been sending money to a friend, an Afghan commando who was stuck in Kenya and trying to get to Ukraine.
Reporting contributed Adam Goldman in Washington, DC; Nazim Rahim in Alexandria, Virginia; Kurt Streeter in Seattle; Audra D.S. Burch And Jane Smith in West Palm Beach, Florida; Constant Mayheut And evelina ryabenko in Kyiv; and Maggie Astor, Halina Bennett, Michael Corkery, Hank Sanders, Robin Stein And Isabel Taft in New York. Susan C. Beachy Contributed to research.