Ryan Wesley Routh has a lengthy criminal record in North Carolina.
Washington:
A 58-year-old man detained in connection with an alleged assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump said in a 2023 interview that he planned to recruit potential Afghan soldiers through Pakistan to fight in Ukraine against Russia.
Ryan Wesley Routh, who authorities suspect of planning to attack the Republican presidential candidate while he was playing golf, made the remarks in an interview with The New York Times.
In a 2023 interview with the newspaper, Raut also said he was looking for recruits for Ukraine among Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban. He said he planned to transport them, in some cases illegally, from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine. He said dozens had expressed interest.
“We can probably buy some passports through Pakistan because it's a very corrupt country,” the New York Times quotes him as saying.
He has expressed pro-Ukrainian views in his public statements, leading him to give interviews to several news organizations in 2023, including The New York Times and Semafor.
Routt is a self-employed affordable housing developer in Hawaii who has occasionally criticized the former president.
It was the second attempt on Trump’s life in two months. In July, a life-threatening attack on the 78-year-old Trump at a Pennsylvania rally shocked the nation. He suffered a broken right ear after a young gunman fired several shots at him at a campaign rally.
During Sunday's attack, Trump was on the highway, several hundred yards away, when Secret Service agents spotted Routh hiding in the bushes and opened fire, law enforcement officials said, the New York Times reported.
The report says he fled the scene in a car and was detained during a traffic stop by traffic police. A rifle with a telescopic sight, as well as a camera and two backpacks were found in the bushes.
Routh, who authorities suspect of planning to attack the former president while he was playing golf, posted comments on an account linked to him, X, that alluded to an assassination attempt on Trump in July, CNN reported.
In separate posts, Rout tagged President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, urging them to visit those injured at the rally.
“You and Biden should visit the people injured in the hospital after Trump's rally and attend the funeral of the firefighter killed. Trump will never do anything for them,” he wrote in a post addressed to Harris.
Routh, who has a lengthy criminal record in North Carolina, has frequently posted about politics and donated exclusively to Democratic candidates and charities since 2019, according to the New York Post.
He also criticized Trump in an April 22 X post, saying, “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose.” He advised Biden, 81, to campaign to preserve a “democratic and free America” in an April 22 X post while he was still running for re-election. He said Trump wanted to “make Americans slaves against their master.” Meanwhile, Oran Rout, the son of the man accused of attempting to assassinate Trump, said his father traveled to Ukraine and volunteered what his son said was “humanitarian” aid to troops defending the country from Russian forces who invaded in 2022, The Guardian reported.
Oran said his father was an ardent supporter of the Ukrainian cause.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated source.)