A 58-year-old man detained in connection with an alleged assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has said in an interview in 2023 that he was planning to recruit potential Afghan soldiers through Pakistan to fight against Russia in Ukraine.
Ryan Wesley Routh, who authorities suspect was planning to attack the Republican presidential candidate while he was golfing, made the comments to The New York Times.
During an interview with a newspaper in 2023, Routh also said he was looking for recruits for Ukraine from among Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban. He said he plans to smuggle them, in some cases illegally, to Ukraine from Pakistan and Iran. He said dozens of people had expressed interest.
“We can probably buy some passports through Pakistan, because it is a very corrupt country,” he was quoted as saying by the New York Times.
He has displayed pro-Ukrainian views in his public statements, leading to him being interviewed by several news organizations, including The New York Times and Semaphore, in 2023.
Routh is a self-employed affordable housing builder in Hawaii who has repeatedly criticized the former president.
This was the second deadly attack on Trump in the last two months. In July, 78-year-old Trump was attacked during a rally in Pennsylvania, which shocked the entire country. The young shooter fired several bullets at him at the campaign rally, injuring his right ear.
Trump was a few hundred yards away during Sunday’s attack when Secret Service personnel spotted Routh hiding in bushes and opened fire, the New York Times reported, citing law enforcement officials.
He fled the scene in a vehicle and was taken into custody during a traffic stop, and a rifle, a camera and two bags were recovered from bushes, the report said.
Routh, who authorities suspect was planning to attack the former president while he was golfing, posted comments on an X account linked to him in July referencing an assassination attempt on Trump, CNN reported.
In separate posts, Routh tagged President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, encouraging them to visit those injured at the rally.
“You and Biden should visit the people injured at Trump’s rally in the hospital and attend the funeral of the firemen who were killed. Trump will never do anything for them,” he wrote in a post addressed to Harris.
Routh, who has a long criminal record in North Carolina, frequently posted about politics and has donated significantly to Democratic candidates and other causes since 2019, the New York Post reported.
He also criticised Trump in a post on X on April 22 in which he declared, “Democracy is on the ballot and we cannot lose.” He advised Biden, 81, in a post on X on April 22, when he was running for re-election, that he should campaign to keep “America democratic and free”. He claimed Trump wanted to “turn Americans into slaves against the masters”. Meanwhile, Oran Routh, the son of the man accused of trying to assassinate Trump, has said his father went to Ukraine and volunteered to provide “humanitarian” aid to soldiers defending the country from Russian forces who invaded in 2022, The Guardian reported.
Oran said his father was passionate about the Ukraine issue
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