American media revealed, on Monday, information about the accused in what the Federal Bureau of Investigation described as a new attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate.
The gunman who opened fire on the former president’s golf course was identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, of Hawaii, The New York Times, Fox News and CNN reported, citing unnamed law enforcement officials.
Roth was arrested after Secret Service agents “opened fire on a gunman” armed with an AK-47 rifle on the edge of Trump’s private golf course in Florida, where the former president was playing golf on Sunday.
The media added that Roth visited Kiev in 2022, where he went to support Ukraine.
CNN and CBS reported that Roth was a self-employed builder of affordable housing in Hawaii, had a long criminal record and regularly published articles on politics and current events, sometimes criticizing Trump, the Republican presidential candidate.
Roth has been vocal in his support for Ukraine since the current crisis began.
“I am prepared to travel to Krakow and go to the border of Ukraine to volunteer, fight and die,” Roth said in a post on the X platform in March 2022, according to the New York Times, which interviewed him.
AFP interviewed Roth in Kyiv in late April 2022 while he was taking part in a demonstration in support of Ukrainians in the city of Mariupol.
“We want everyone around the world to stop what they are doing and come here now,” he told AFP at the time.
Roth told reporters there that his goal was to help recruit foreign fighters to support Kiev’s cause after he was turned down for volunteering due to his age.
Trump was playing golf in West Palm Beach, Florida, near his Mar-a-Lago residence, when the shooter was spotted in the distance.
This is the second time in two months that Trump has been threatened by a gunman. The former president was shot in the ear on July 13 while speaking at an outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
An official with the International Corps of Foreign Volunteers in Ukraine told CNN that Roth sent emails offering to recruit foreign volunteers, but that the Ukrainian military believed he was “delusional.”
“We didn’t even respond, there was nothing to respond to. He was never part of the Corps and did not cooperate with us in any way,” Oleksandr Shaguriy, an official in the Land Forces Command’s foreigners coordination department, told CNN.
#Information #revealed #accused #attempt #assassinate #Trump