‘Ticking time bomb’: Those who raised suspicions about Trump suspect question if enough was done
The more Chelsea Walsh spoke to the eccentric American woman who appeared in every square and cobblestone street of the Ukrainian capital, the more she became frightened.
Walsh was in Kiev as a nurse and aid worker in the early days of the war in Ukraine. Ryan Routh was there to recruit foreign soldiers to fight the Russians. But Walsh never saw him make much progress and instead watched him grow increasingly angry and deranged, kicking a beggar, threatening to burn down a music studio that insulted him, and speaking with angry hatred about his own children.
Equally disturbing, she said, was Routh’s obsessive, strangely specific plan to kill him. Russian President Vladimir Putindetailing the various explosives, poisons and cross-border maneuvers Routh would use “to kill him in his sleep.”
“Ryan Routh is a ticking time bomb,” she recalled telling U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in an hour-long interview upon returning to the United States at Dulles International Airport near Washington in June 2022. She said she later reiterated her concerns in separate tips to both the FBI and Interpol, the international police agency.
“There’s one person you have to keep an eye on,” she said. “And that’s Ryan Routh.”
Walsh says she never heard anything more about her tips and didn’t think much of Routh until she saw him in the news last Sunday as the 58-year-old accused of stalking him. Donald Trump at the former president’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, in a apparent assassination attempt.
Walsh’s report was one of at least four reports to the U.S. government that, while not direct threats to Trump, raised suspicions about Routh in the years leading up to his arrest. Others include a 2019 tip to the FBI about Routh being in possession of a firearm after a felony conviction, an online report to the State Department last year by an aid worker questioning Routh’s military recruitment tactics, and Routh’s own interview with Customs and Border Protection about those efforts, which led to a referral for possible investigation by Homeland Security Investigations.
What was done in response that might have stopped Routh or at least put him under greater scrutiny is not entirely clear. The agencies involved did not respond to questions from The Associated Press, did not have records of such a report or had questions about whether the report warranted further investigation.
However, some people question whether federal agencies are vigilant enough, and even equipped, to deal with the growing number of potential threats coming to their attention every day.
“Federal agencies should be on their toes to detect and combat these threats,” said Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Congress and the American people need to be assured that the federal government is doing everything it can.”
Walsh, who lives just a few miles from Trump’s golf course, says she can’t help but think this all could have been avoided.
“The authorities have definitely dropped the ball here,” she said. “They were warned.”
Sarah Adams, a former CIA agent who was behind the State Department tip, said she decided to take action after learning that Routh was trying to recruit former Afghan fighters with false promises of a spot in the Ukrainian military.
She said she had written a bulletin urging the 50 humanitarian aid groups she was helping in Ukraine to keep Routh at bay, and had her company send a similar online report to the State Department.
“There was plenty to look at,” said Adams, who lives in Tampa, Fla. “I don’t know if they even hired anyone to do it.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said there were no reports of complaints about Routh. He said he could not rule out that “someone, somewhere, has not communicated with someone.”
Customs and Border Protection also said it could not confirm whether Walsh met with any of its agents because it does not comment on individual cases. The FBI also declined to confirm Walsh’s warning, citing a policy of not commenting on ongoing investigations. Interpol did not respond to a request for comment.
Walsh showed the AP notes she took during her conversation with Customs and Border Protection, and a text she sent to a friend about her messages to the FBI and Interpol, timestamped shortly after she sent them.
Routh, a construction worker from North Carolina who moved to Hawaii in recent years, was detained weapons charges related to the Trump case. His federal public defender, Kristy Militello, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Routh, a self-described mercenary leader, did not hesitate to talk to anyone who would listen about his dangerous, sometimes violent plans to involve himself in conflicts around the world.
He was interviewed by The New York Times, photographed by the AP and other news organizations, and appeared in videos from Kiev advocating for foreign fighters. He released a self published book last year on Amazon, “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” in which he writes about the wisdom of a well-timed assassination of a world leader to change history.
“You are free to kill Trump,” Routh wrote, referring to Iran in retaliation for the former president’s decision to cancel the U.S. nuclear deal with that country. Routh subsequently described Trump, whom he voted for in 2016, as a “fool” and a “clown” for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and for pushing a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine.
Walsh said she initially found the wiry, baggy Routh to be just plain weird. But as time went on, she got a darker vibe from the way Routh hung out on the streets, seemed to be everywhere and kept an eye on everyone.
She watched as Routh kicked a homeless man begging for money and snarled, “The Ukrainians should pay me for what I’m doing here!” She said he spoke of his adult children with such hatred — “I wish I never had them” — that it frightened her. She recalled him threatening to burn down a music studio because people there were laughing at him for a song he had written.
“Ryan was the type of guy who would blow up a building on a Tuesday just because he felt like it,” Walsh said.
Routh’s musings on killing Putin were also echoed in his book published last year, in which he describes an even more unlikely plan for someone with no military experience: launching thousands of armed drones to destroy Putin’s many homes.
But in the end, he wrote, the Ukrainians and disaffected Russians he hoped to recruit as accomplices lost their “courage and will” to pull it off.
In 2019, three years before Routh flew to Kiev to form a Foreign Legion, the FBI followed up on a tip that he was in possession of a firearm, despite felony convictions from years earlier.
But when questioned, the alleged tipster recanted and did not verify that he had provided the initial information. The FBI then referred the case to Hawaii law enforcement for further investigation. Honolulu police confirmed this week that they were looking into it.
In June 2023, Routh was pulled aside by Customs and Border Protection agents at Honolulu Airport upon returning from Ukraine, Poland and Turkey. He was questioned about his activities abroad.
As first reported by the website Only the news and corroborated by testimony before Congress last week, documents show that Routh told them he had recruited about 100 fighters from Afghanistan, Moldova and Taiwan and that his wife was paying for his efforts.
Routh also gave agents a business card identifying him as the director of a group called the International Volunteer Center.
The documents show that the agents referred Routh’s case to Homeland Security Investigations for further review, but the agency declined to investigate the matter further.
Katrina Berger, the agency’s deputy executive director, said in testimony before Congress on Wednesday that the agency receives hundreds of such requests a day and that Routh’s comments were not of a nature to warrant his “immediate detention.”
When asked specifically whether further investigation was being waived, she said she wasn’t sure and that she would look into it.
Routh’s criminal history in his hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina, includes a 2002 arrest for evading a traffic stop and barricading himself in front of officers with a fully automatic machine gun and a “weapon of mass destruction,” which turned out to be an explosive with a 10-inch-long fuse.
In 2010, police searched a warehouse Routh owned and found more than 100 stolen items, ranging from power tools and building supplies to kayaks and hot tubs. Police alleged in a sworn statement that he sold the items to buy crack cocaine.
In both cases, judges gave Routh probation or a suspended sentence, allowing him to avoid prison, according to court records.
Tracy Fulk, a now-retired Greensboro police officer who arrested Routh during the long-ago armed standoff, said she was not surprised by last week’s news about Routh.
“If you remember all the warnings, confrontations and stuff like that,” she said, “he was kind of ‘out there.’”
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AP writers contributing to this report: Michael Biesecker, Eric Tucker, Matthew Lee and Rebecca Santana in Washington; Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu; Makiya Seminera in Greensboro, North Carolina; Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Joshua Goodman in Miami; and news researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York.
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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org