Benedict Smith
17 September 2024 4:26pm
US authorities were reportedly warned about the “predatory behaviour” of Ryan Wesley Routh before he allegedly tried to assassinate Donald Trump on Sunday.
Mr Routh is said to have behaved so erratically while trying to recruit soldiers for the Ukraine war effort that those who came into contact with him repeatedly flagged his behaviour to the US government, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Chelsea Walsh, a nurse who spent around six weeks in Ukraine, was worried by his threats of violence after meeting him in Kyiv that she warned a US border officer about him.
In an hour-long interview in June 2022, she said Mr Routh – who allegedly lay in wait for Trump with an assault rifle at the former president’s Florida golf course – was one of the most dangerous Americans she had met in Ukraine.
She is said to have shown the officer a list of more than a dozen Americans who displayed “Overall Predatory Behaviour (or antisocial traits)”, putting the former construction worker near the top.
“Of all the people on there, Ryan Routh should be number one,” she said.
When Ms Walsh heard the following year that Mr Routh was attempting to recruit Syrian refugees to fight in Ukraine, she filed an online report with the FBI and Interpol outlining her concerns about him.
Mr Routh headed to Ukraine soon after the Russian invasion in February 2022, declaring that he was ready to “fight and die” for the country.
However, he was rejected by its International Legion given his age and lack of military experience, after which he seems to have turned his attentions to recruiting foreign soldiers for the war effort.
Sarah Adams, a former CIA officer who helped run a network linking 50 aid groups, said that Mr Routh was known as a “fraudster” and “kind of a whack job”.
When she alerted aid groups to his attempts to recruit Afghan soldiers, she said they subsequently reported him to the US State Department.
The FBI said on Monday that it had been tipped off in 2019 that Mr Routh owned a firearm despite being a convicted felon.
However, the bureau closed the case when it was unable to verify the information, passing on the details to authorities in Hawaii where Mr Routh lives.
“In following up on the tip, the alleged complainant was interviewed and did not verify providing the initial information,” Jeffrey Veltri, the head of Miami’s FBI field office, said. “The FBI passed that information to local law enforcement in Honolulu.”
A Ukrainian military source previously told The Telegraph that the International Legion considered requesting that the Ukrainian government ban Mr Routh from the country over his “bizarre” recruitment schemes.
“He was never in Ukraine in any official capacity, he simply decided that he was going to come here and save the day himself, by doing his own thing,” the source said.
“I never met him in person but I was in contact with him multiple times to request to him that he stop his activities, most of which were bizarre and alarming.
“For example, he was trying to run around and do his own recruiting of former soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria, and to talk us into arranging their travel here, despite us saying ‘no’ multiple times.”
The State Department, State Department, and Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to requests for comment by The Wall Street Journal.
The post US authorities were warned about Trump gunman’s ‘predatory behaviour’ appeared first on The Telegraph.
