Donald Trump 'assassination attempt' suspect was 'rejected by Ukraine army'

A Ukrainian army official who met the Trump shooting suspect while he was in the country has described him as being "full of s**t and hot air".

Ryan Routh, 58, was arrested over what the FBI said "appears to be an attempted assassination" after he was allegedly spotted pushing a rifle through the gates of Trump's golf course on Sunday. He was around 400 yards from the former president and Republican nominee when Secret Service agents opened fire, and was apprehended by police in his car on a nearby highway after fleeing the scene. It has since emerged that in 2022, Routh had travelled to Ukraine to help fight the Russian invasion - but according to members of the nation's foreign legion, he was never officially a part of the unit and became a nuisance.

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He is said to have repeatedly told the army of his far-fetched plans to recruit "hundreds" of refugees from Afghanistan and Syria to fight, despite being told that they were not interested.

An anonymous former official from International Legion of Territorial Defence of Ukraine told the Telegraph that Routh been trying to "get involved in recruitment" but was "really only interfering", adding: "He was called out a number of times by Legion people and told to stop his shenanigans, but that didn’t seem to stop him. He was mostly quite eccentric. I could smell a mile away that he was full of s***."

Another Ukrainian military source said Routh was "never in Ukraine in any official capacity", and had "decided that he was going to come here and save the day himself, by doing his own thing". The source said that he had contacted him multiple times to ask him to stop his "bizarre" and "alarming" activities.

Routh has frequently posted on social media about the war in Ukraine, and set up a website where he sought to raise money and recruit volunteers to go to Kyiv to join the fight against the Russian invasion. Despite pledging his support to Donald Trump in 2016, in recent years his posts suggest he soured on Mr Trump, and he expressed support for President Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris. In July, following the assassination attempt on Mr Trump in Pennsylvania, Routh urged Mr Biden and Ms Harris to visit those wounded in the shooting at the hospital and to attend the funeral of a former fire chief killed at the rally.

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