The Real Story Behind Trump’s Would-Be Assassin
Ryan Wesley Routh, the man who tried to assassinate Donald Trump on Sunday, professed to be a recruiter for a group of foreign soldiers helping Ukraine fight off Russian invaders—a claim that has led some to suspect that Routh might be a Ukrainian agent, or a CIA or NATO tool, hired to kill Trump for political purposes.
However, those who really did fight in Ukraine with the group—known as the International Legion—say Routh was not associated with them, recruited nobody to the cause, and did little during his time in Ukraine aside from garner publicity for himself.
Malcolm Nance, a retired Navy officer who served in the legion’s 1st and 3rd battalions as a tactical intelligence specialist, told me in a telephone conversation Sunday night, “This guy used to hang around St. Michael’s Square in front of the Intercontinental, where all the reporters stayed in Kyiv. So, a lot of reporters interviewed him. He made himself distinctive by wearing a bandanna with an American flag on it. He put up a sign saying ‘Join the International Legion.’ But he had nothing to do with the legion.”
Stephen Presley, another Legionnaire reached by phone Sunday night, agreed. “I met him, talked with him once. He was promising people to put them in the legion, but there’s no way he could have recruited them.”
Nance and Presley had pretty much forgotten about Routh until the news reports that Secret Service agents had found him toting an SKS rifle at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, one hole ahead of where the former (and possibly future) president was playing. [Update, Sept. 16, 2024, at 4:13 p.m.: In line with early news stories, this piece originally referred to the gun as an AK-47. Subsequent reports have identified the rifle as an SKS, a similar but older model.] In the few hours between the news flash and when I talked with Nance and Presley on the phone, both men texted or emailed many of their fellow Legionnaires to see if Routh had played any role in the group or the war. All their comrades dismissed the notion out of hand.
The legion was set up and run by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. “Vetting was very elaborate,” Nance told me. “You had to enter through Poland, go through a tent on the Ukrainian side, wait for a van to come take you to a special site. You needed to have military experience; initially, you needed to have combat experience. You were taken to a basic-training battalion at a training facility. All this applied to everyone who came through. Anyone who came from outside of that chain was not allowed to join.” The process was tight, he said, “because there was a lot of concern about Russian infiltration.”
Routh went through none of these processes. In a 2022 Newsweek Romania interview, which CBS News dug up, Routh said that the Ukrainian defense ministry had rejected his attempts to join the war effort because of his age (he is now 58) and lack of military experience. (The latter was probably more relevant. Nance was 61 when he applied, and he was accepted.)
In June of this year, the International Legion put out a statement “warning about Ryan Routh: he is not, and never has been, associated with the International Legion or the Ukrainian Armed Forces at all. He is not, & never has been, a legion recruiter. He is misrepresenting himself and lying to many people.” The legion issued a similar statement on Sunday.
The Azov Brigade, a former militia that is now part of Ukraine’s National Guard, also issued a statement after social media posted a clip from a video showing Routh at an Azov rally. Routh “has no connection to Azov and has never had any connection,” the statement said. The rally “was open … anyone could join it.” Routh was “caught on the video … by accident.”
The statement speculates that “the spread of the narrative” about a Routh–Azov connection is “playing along with Russian propaganda” designed to discredit Ukrainian security forces.
This might also be said of the “narrative” about his connection to the International Legion. Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev tweeted Monday morning, “I wonder what would happen if it turned out that the failed new Trump shooter Routh, who recruited mercenaries for the Ukrainian army, was himself hired by the neo-nazi regime in Kiev for this assassination attempt?”
Critics of U.S. military support for Ukraine have chimed in. Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency analyst who fled to Moscow after leaking extremely classified documents, tweeted, “We know little so far, but w[ith] alleged Trump shooter’s personal and public participation in military activity in Ukraine, it is hard to imagine this White House’s agencies can claim zero contact—‘clean hands.’ Something of [a Lee Harvey] Oswald vibe here. Congress should get answers.”
Alex Jones, the far-right head of infowars.com, who has 2.8 million Twitter followers, posted this: “Ryan Routh is a total NATO/CIA asset and was told where to be today to kill Trump.”
There has been speculation on X about how Routh could have known that Trump would be playing golf Sunday afternoon; some suspect that he must have received inside intelligence information. This is beyond ridiculous. It is no secret when Trump is at Mar-a-Lago. It is also well known that when he is staying there, he plays golf nearly every day.
A few tweets have surfaced a contract with the Ukrainian defense ministry that was found among Routh’s Facebook files. However, Routh’s name appears nowhere in the contract. All the spaces, where a name might appear, are blank.
Routh’s motives are not yet known. His politics were clearly variable—at various points, he supported the presidential candidacies of Trump and Tulsi Gabbard. There are several fake social media accounts linked to Routh circulating that try to paint his views as plainly Democratic. (One of the fake accounts featured this Instagram bio: “Proud to be LGBTQ+ member. Proud Dem. Don’t follow if youre a maga.”) In fact, Routh voted for Trump in 2016 but, back in January, supported a GOP ticket of Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. It’s possible that he might have been driven by Trump’s opposition to funding Ukraine’s military, though there’s no direct evidence of this.
Routh does seem to have been genuinely passionate about Ukraine and eager to get somehow involved, but the claims about his activities—propagated by himself and spread by others, out of gullibility or opportunism—are not genuine in the slightest.
“Three kinds of guys are attracted to war scenes,” Nance told me. “Criminals, crusaders, and crazies. This guy was a crazy crusader.”
