The FBI, Interpol, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were warned about former President Donald Trump’s second alleged assassin, Ryan Wesley Routh, months before Sunday, when the Secret Service spotted Routh with a rifle about 400 yards away from the former president.
The lack of preventive measures against Routh caused some political pundits to speculate that the federal government engaged in willful negligence while protecting the president.
Chelsea Walsh, a nurse who had several encounters with Routh in Kyiv, Ukraine, alerted authorities to Routh’s threats of violence multiple times, she told the Wall Street Journal on Monday. In June 2022, she conveyed her concerns to a Customs and Border Protection officer in an hour-long interview at Washington’s Dulles airport, noting that “Routh was among the most dangerous Americans she met during her month-and-a-half-long stint in Ukraine.”
Again, in 2023, Walsh alerted the FBI and Interpol about Routh, but she did not hear back from the FBI, the Journal reported:
When she heard in 2023 that 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 Routh and others, she said. Neither Customs nor the FBI followed up with her, she said. The FBI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Routh’s behavior had been flagged to the FBI in the past, though not in connection to Ukraine. A tipster told the FBI in 2019 that Routh had a firearm despite being a felon, but when questioned further wouldn’t verify providing the information, an FBI official said Monday. The bureau passed the information onto authorities in Honolulu, where Routh was living at the time, and closed the investigation.
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After being alerted to these messages in early June, other aid groups banned him from their Signal groups, and reported his activities to the State Department, noting their concerns that he might be engaging in human trafficking or immigration fraud, according to Adams. “Beware of American Ryan Routh,” Adams warned Ukraine aid groups in a June 2, 2023, message.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) launched his own investigation into the attempted assassination on Tuesday, following the FBI and Customs and Border Protection’s failure to take action against Routh.
“It’s not in the best interest of our state or our nation to have the same federal agencies seeking to prosecute Donald Trump leading this investigation,” DeSantis told reporters. “The public deserves to know the truth about how this assassination [attempt] came to be.”
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
