Would-be Trump assassin has ties to CIA, says former official
Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old Democrat arrested last week after reportedly trying to assassinate President Donald Trump, has ties to the US Central Intelligence Agency, according to a former US State Department official.
On September 15th, a Secret Service agent spotted Routh hiding behind bushes at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach. Routh was equipped with a rifle, a GoPro, and two backpacks. He appeared to be lying in wait 300-500 yards from Trump.
Mainstream media outlets have tried to paint Routh, a Democrat donor who was vociferously anti-Trump, as a Republican. Following his arrest, Routh’s X account was immediately scrubbed from the social media platform without explanation.
Last week, former State Department official and Foundation for Freedom Online Executive Director Mike Benz shed some light on Routh’s mystique, saying he has links to the CIA.
“You can almost spin the globe and find a place where there was paramilitary activity, and somehow Ryan Routh has just waltzed his way through almost a dozen of them,” Benz explained to Natalie Winters on War Room.
The narrative that Ryan Routh is a lay construction worker from North Carolina who is passionate about Ukraine is “nonsense,” said Benz, who went on to explain the function Routh has played for US intelligence.
Routh played pivotal role in recruiting fighters for Ukraine
According to Benz, ISIS and Al Qaeda fighters are being recruited to fight against the Russians and assist NATO in helping Ukraine win the war. It is unknown whether all of ISIS’ tactics — such as blowing up a Moscow theatre in March and killing 137 concertgoers — are approved by NATO. But the Muslim terror groups are reportedly being recruited to fight in Ukraine.
Ever since Crimea joined the Russian Federation in 2014, Benz explained, the CIA began working to arm the Kyiv government to take Western Ukraine back from Russia. Part of this capacity-building mission involved importing fighters, including ISIS and Al Qaeda soldiers, to bolster Ukraine’s forces.
One of the facilitators of these mercenary shipments was Ryan Routh, says Benz.
“He has an entire website dedicated to military recruiting of Afghani, Pakistani and Iranian militants to come to Ukraine. He explicitly tells them multiple times on his website in big, all-caps, bold lettering, as well as in hundreds of Facebook posts: ‘Do not tell your local embassy that you are coming to Ukraine. Don’t say anything. Just send me your passport information and take a plane to Ukraine, or take a plane to Poland and ride a bus into Ukraine.’”
“What Ryan Routh was doing was he was collecting thousands, literally thousands, of passports of terrorists in foreign countries, in CIA war zones, and telling them to not tell their local embassy that they’re traveling, but instead go directly through him as a middleman because he can secure them visas.”
Benz said Routh repeatedly made references to his direct communication with the US embassy in Kyiv, for which he served as a backchannel to proffer passports for mercenaries. It was that embassy through which the CIA in 2014 overthrew the democratically elected Kyiv government headed by then-President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych, who was pro-Russia, was replaced by comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Tied to an assassination plot?
Routh openly told the New York Times in March 2023 that he planned to bring ex-Taliban fighters from Iran and Pakistan to Ukraine.
The day Routh appeared in court to answer for firearm charges after being apprehended by authorities, another man was arraigned for an assassination plot against Trump. The Justice Department says that the suspect, Asif Merchant, is a Pakistani national with ties to Iran. Merchant pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Protected
Another odd fact about Routh is that although he had a criminal record boasting at least 74 arrests and 100 charges, he did not spend a day in jail prior to his alleged attempted assassination of Trump. When US Customs and Border Protection agents flagged Routh last year as he returned from Ukraine, the Department of Homeland Security refused to investigate, according to Just the News.
