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America First Legal is demanding that the Biden-Harris administration share any records concerning Ryan Routh, the man who allegedly planned to assassinate President Donald Trump in Florida on Sunday.
AFL shared a statement regarding its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed just one day following the latest assassination attempt against Trump.
“In just a few months, the American people witnessed two assassination attempts of former President Donald Trump. Undoubtedly, based on public reporting about the attempted assassin in Florida, the Biden-Harris government has records that the American public is entitled to see,” AFL Legal Executive Director Gene Hamilton said.
“It is highly abnormal for an individual to travel to an active war zone–in this case, Ukraine–and then try to recruit other citizens to fight on behalf of a foreign nation without someone knowing something. We are committed to quickly exposing what the U.S. government knew about this individual,” he added.
The AFL’s request noted Routh’s criminal history and activities in Ukraine as reasons to believe that he was an individual of concern to the U.S. government. The FOIA request seeks to know whether Routh was being tracked and whether he could have posed a threat to Trump.
Other reports have noted that Routh published a book calling for Iran to assassinate Trump. “You are free to assassinate Trump,” Routh wrote concerning Iran in a 2023 self-published book called “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War.”
Routh also repeatedly traveled to Ukraine where he publicly recruited Afghans and others as volunteers for the Ukraine Foreign Legion, according to a Fox News report.
A Wall Street Journal report also revealed on Monday that one nurse who was worried about Routh’s threats of violence after she saw him in Kyiv reported him to a Customs and Border Protection officer at the Washington Dulles International Airport in June 2022.
The same report also claimed that the FBI was given a tip in 2019 that Routh had a firearm despite being a felon.
On Tuesday, The New York Post reported that Routh has a criminal history in North Carolina where he once lived in Greensboro. In 2002, he was reportedly arrested for a “binary explosive with a 10-in[ch] detonation cord and a blasting cap.”
Several agencies were named in the request, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
