Takeaways from AP’s report on warning signs about suspect in apparent Trump assassination attempt

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

At least four times, tips were made to U.S. government agencies including the FBI and State Department that raised suspicions about the actions of a man now accused in the apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

What was done in response to these reports that could have stopped Ryan Routh or at least put him under greater scrutiny is not entirely clear but some people are questioning whether enough was done.

Nurse Chelsea Walsh says she never heard back after reporting Routh’s violent behavior in 2022 while he was recruiting foreign soldiers for the war in Ukraine.

“The authorities have definitely dropped the ball on this,” she said. “They were warned.”

Some key points from an Associated Press report:

‘Ticking time bomb’

Walsh met Ryan Routh in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, in 2022 when she was a nurse and aid worker and he was there to recruit foreign soldiers to fight the Russians.

Walsh said she watched him grow increasingly angry and unhinged, kicking a panhandler, threatening to burn down a music studio that slighted him and speaking of his own children with seething hatred.

Just as troubling, she said, was Routh’s obsessive, oddly specific plotting to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, describing the various explosives, poisons and cross-border maneuvers that Routh would employ “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 hourlong interview upon returning to the United States at Dulles International Airport near Washington in June 2022. She says she later repeated her concerns in separate tips to both the FBI and Interpol, the international policing group.

Walsh says she never heard back about her tips and she did not think much more about Routh until she saw him in the news last Sunday as the 58-year-old accused of stalking Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, in an apparent assassination attempt.

Customs and Border Protection said it could not confirm Walsh had a meeting with one of its agents because it does not comment on individual cases. The FBI declined to confirm Walsh’s warning, citing a policy of not commenting on ongoing investigations. Interpol did not respond to a request for comment.

Other complaints

Walsh’s account 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 included a tip to the FBI in 2019 about Routh being in possession of a firearm after a felony conviction, an online report by an aid worker to the State Department last year questioning his military recruiting tactics, and Routh’s own interview about those efforts with Customs and Border Protection that prompted a referral for a possible inquiry by Homeland Security Investigations.

What was done in response was not clear. The agencies involved either did not respond to queries from the AP, have no record of such a report or had questions about whether the report warranted further investigation.

Now, some people are asking whether federal agencies are vigilant enough or equipped enough to deal with a growing number of potential threats that are brought to their attention every day.

“Federal agencies ought to be on the highest alert to detect and combat these threats,” said Republican Sen Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sarah Adams, an ex-CIA officer behind the State Department tip, said she decided to act after learning Routh was trying to recruit former Afghan fighters with false promises of spots in the Ukrainian military.

She said she drafted a bulletin urging the 50 humanitarian aid groups she was helping in Ukraine to keep Routh at arm’s length, and she had her company send a similar online report to the State Department.

“There was plenty to look into,” said Adams, who lives in Tampa, Florida. “I don’t know if they even assigned someone to work it.”

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said there is no record of any Routh complaints. He said he could not rule out that “someone didn’t have a communication with somebody somewhere.”

Routh’s own words

In June 2023, Routh was pulled aside by Customs and Border Protection agents at the Honolulu airport when he returned from Ukraine, Poland and Turkey. He was asked about his activities overseas.

As first reported by the website Just the News and confirmed in congressional testimony this past week, documents show Routh told them he had been recruiting as many as 100 fighters from Afghanistan, Moldova and Taiwan, and that his wife was paying for his efforts.

Routh also gave agents a business card that claimed he was the director of a group called the International Volunteer Center.

The documents state that the agents referred Routh’s case to Homeland Security Investigations for further scrutiny but it declined to pursue the matter.

In her congressional testimony Wednesday, that agency’s executive associate director, Katrina Berger, said the agency get hundreds of such requests a day and that Routh’s comments did not rise to the level to take him into “immediate custody.”

Asked specifically to confirm whether a further investigation was declined, she said she was not sure and would look into it.