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Phone records show suspect in apparent attempted assassination was near golf course for 12 hours
Man accused of trying to kill Trump wrote a book urging Iran to assassinate the ex-president
Ryan Routh, who portrayed himself online as a man involved in various causes including building housing for homeless people in Hawaii and recruiting fighters for Ukraine, was arrested for allegedly stalking and attempting to assassinate Donald Trump in Florida.
Alleged first follow of Routh on Twitter.
Alleged first follow of Routh on Twitter.
Routh knew how to perp surrender himself without getting shot by disabling his arms upward with his shirt to eliminate all suggestion of threat. Guess that Intel training came in handy.
Failed assassin Ryan Routh was in federal court yesterday, in a hearing quite logically called the “first appearance.” Fox covered the story under the headline, “Trump assassination attempt suspect laughs, smiles during first court appearance in Florida.” Routh was apparently cracking jokes with his public defender, which sounds annoying but could just be his way of managing anxiety.
Details were sparsely provided, but this most interesting paragraph leaped out:
The judge also asked Routh if he was able to afford his own defense attorney or if he
needed a public defender. Routh said he does not have enough income, and when asked
by the judge, said he makes about $3,000 a month, has zero savings and owns zero real
estate. Routh also told the court he has two trucks in Hawaii worth about $1,000 each,
partially supports his 25-year-old son and does not own any jewelry.
Right away, we see some problems. For Portlanders, Routh claimed an annual income of $36,000 — far below the poverty level. Which means there is a lot of mysterious money floating around world-traveling Mr. Routh.
Here are only a few of the many possible questions: how did Routh afford international travel to and from Ukraine? Or to buy guns, body armor, and GoPro cameras? Who owns the Nissan truck he tried to escape in? Did he rent it? If so, with what money and what credit? How did Routh get to Florida? Where was he staying? How was he paying for stuff? Cash? Credit?
How did flat-broke Routh get in front of nearly every corporate media camera and reporter in 2022, from Newsweek to the New York Times?
Routh has an extensive low-level criminal record going back decades, including felony weapons violations. How did he buy the gun he brought to Trump’s golf course? According to the FBI’s criminal affidavit, it was a military SKS-style assault rifle made in former Soviet bloc countries, so it wasn’t from around here. The rifle’s serial number was "obliterated" and unreadable to the naked eye.
Why obliterate the serial number? Who is Routh trying to protect? Who gave him that gun?
We’re not the only ones asking questions. Martin County Sheriff Will Snyder, whose officers arrested Routh, gave a courageous —even reckless— press conference yesterday during which he said the quiet part out loud.
At yesterday’s Martin County press conference about the arrest, Sheriff Snyder wondered whether Routh could be part of a conspiracy:
“He was smart, he was just driving with the flow of traffic. He may have thought he got away with it. He couldn’t have known a witness took a picture.
He’s not from this area. Which raises the bigger question, how does a guy get all the way to Trump International, realize the former President is golfing, and is able to get a rifle into that vicinity?
Is this guy part of a conspiracy? Or a lone gunman? If he’s part of a conspiracy, then this whole thing takes on a really ominous tone.”
It’s a literal conspiracy theory! And Sheriff Snyder’s question was a good one. But, to expand on his theory: was Routh connected in any way to any U.S. security state agency or NGO? To any Ukrainian security or intelligence agency?
Where has that skinny hedge-hider been hanging out recently? And with whom?
So that’s what we know so far on Day Two. From the evolving media coverage, even on Fox, Routh is beginning to be painted like some kind of deranged lunatic. But that is a straw man. Do not buy that story. While there is plenty of evidence he was an amoral leftist, easily influenced, effortlessly manipulable, even criminally inclined, there is zero evidence Routh was clinically crazy.
In fact, it’s just the opposite. Routh appears to have seamlessly navigated complex and difficult life situations —like traveling to and from a war zone, and self-publishing his dumb book on Amazon— that would flummox most of us. He was also vetted by any number of media platforms that found him credible enough to feature in their pro-Ukraine propaganda stories.
In the photo above, failed assassin Routh is pictured with celebrity chef and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Jose Andres. The background of the picture is unclear. But Andres is well-known for leading a team of other celebrity chefs into Gaza to deliver canapes and snail puree to war-torn Palestinians. And he is also well-known for hanging out with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Ukraine’s former comedian Zelensky.
For instance, consider this NBC headline, from April this year:
Biden calls chef José Andrés after Israeli strike kills World Central Kitchen aid workers
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the "incident is emblematic of a larger
problem and evidence of why distribution of aid in Gaza has been so challenging."
... What were Nobel-nominee Jose Andres and flat-broke Ryan Routh doing together before and after that widely circulated photo was taken in Kiev, Ukraine? Were they just fellow Proxy War proponents? Did they just attend a proxy war rally together?
Why in the photo was Andres pointing at Routh? Bonhomie? Overcome with camaraderie?
We don’t know. But we do know at least one thing: human hedgehog and media darling Routh enjoys just one thin degree of separation from Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Volodymyr Zelensky. Weird.
https://nitter.poast.org/MikeBenzCyber/status/1835842473635049485#m
Yesterday, Governor DeSantis signed an executive order opening Florida’s independent investigation into Ryan Routh’s attempted assassination. The Governor then held a well-attended press conference announcing the investigation, without a single federal official, and it knocked corporate media right off its rocking chair. Some platforms played the story straight, like the AP, which described it as a humdrum ‘parallel’ investigation, under the headline “Florida will launch criminal probe into apparent assassination attempt of Trump, governor says.”
In the brainless New York Times story, Florida’s independent investigation is painted as a conspiracy to embarrass Joe Biden between Governor DeSantis and Republicans in Congress. The Times’ story is headlined, “Why the Story of the Golf Course Shooting Will Be Told Twice.”
The Times’s headline was right, but for the wrong reason. The only reason we’ll get the feds’ side of the story is because they don’t want to be embarrassed by Florida. It’s already started, with the FBI admitting yesterday it once investigated and abandoned Routh in 2019.
A few of the Governor’s comments triggered the Times. The Governor, himself a lawyer, argued the feds have a conflict of interest in investigating Ryan Routh for attempting to kill Trump, since the feds are also simultaneously trying to drag Trump to jail, and are being directed by an Administration seeking to politically castrate the former President.
DeSantis also said the investigation should be open, transparent, and not smothered in inky bureaucratic blackness, like the Las Vegas shooting case has been. DeSantis observed, “I don’t think anyone can honestly claim that the federal government has been forthright and transparent about its past investigations. That’s just the reality. That’s just how these guys operate.”
But those comments, however politically incorrect to the Times, were not the reason why DeSantis said he opened an investigation. The undebatable reason for Florida’s involvement is the feds only charged Routh with two low-level firearms violations: possessing a weapon with a felony conviction and with an obliterated serial number. Together, the two charges amount only to a maximum of 15 years.
“To say you’re going to do a couple gun charges, that is not sufficient,” DeSantis icily declared.
Instead, Florida intends to charge Routh with attempted murder, a state-law crime carrying up to life in prison. Florida need only prove four things: Routh’s intent, preparation, a single act taken in furtherance of the plot, and that it would have succeeded if not interrupted. Those four required elements seem self-evident in the facts already known about Routh’s case.
The DOJ cannot charge Routh with attempted murder, since it’s a state crime. They can’t even charge him with attempted assassination, since candidate Trump doesn’t fit the statutory definition of a political target under federal law, because he hasn’t yet been elected and past officials don’t count. Florida has access to even more crimes, including grand theft auto,* a stolen license plate, and analogous state-level weapons violations.
(* DeSantis’ executive order described Routh’s car, the black Nissan, as ‘stolen,’ which is another state-level crime.)
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