Following the arrest of President Trump’s would-be assassin Sunday, investigators will now turn their attention to Ryan Routh’s shifting political allegiances and dedication to Ukraine in hopes they can determine why he traveled all the way to Florida from Hawaii to shoot the former president.

Routh was arrested following a highway car chase on Sunday, shortly after a Secret Service agent saw and opened fire on the attempted killer, forcing him to flee in his vehicle. Amateur sleuths were quick to find Routh’s social media accounts before both Facebook and X deleted the profiles. 

Routh had previously supported Trump in 2016 before turning to support President Biden in 2020. By 2023, he was publishing a book that said Iran was “free” to kill the former president. In early 2024, he called for Governor Haley and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy — a diehard Trump supporter — to create a “winning” ticket in this year’s presidential election. 

One security expert, former NYPD investigator Patrick Brosnan, told Fox News Digital that law enforcement from the Secret Service to the FBI to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office will look at “all things cellular, online shopping; phone camera images, bank records, email correspondence, recent search engine inquiries, dating app activity, identification of any possible burner phones, footage from … city streets, UPS trucks, Amazon trucks or backup cameras, and all cell tower pings within a fixed distance,” in order to determine Routh’s motives. 

One key political motivation that could help explain Routh’s desire to kill the 45th president is the would-be assassin’s dedication to Ukraine in its war against Russia. Just days after the 2022 invasion, Routh himself traveled to Ukraine to help defend the country, though a spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign legion tells the New York Sun that that Routh “has never been part of, associated with, or linked to the International Legion in any capacity.”

Trump has long had a difficult relationship with Ukraine and its leader, President Zelensky, ever since he withheld military aid in order to get the Ukrainian president to launch an investigation into Mr. Biden and his son, Hunter. Now, since the war has begun and since Trump launched his 2024 bid, he has been saying that Ukraine and Russia must come to a negotiated settlement that could result in President Putin taking Ukrainian territory permanently. 

“I want the war to stop,” Trump said at the debate with Vice President Harris after being asked if he wanted Ukraine to win the war. “I want to save lives.”

In a 2023 interview with Semafor, Routh said that he was frustrated with the Ukrainian government’s inability to recruit foreign soldiers to help defend their own country. 

Routh said he was trying to garner support for a foreign and military aid package by talking to members of Congress. He was also trying to recruit foreign fighters from Afghanistan to help fight the Russians. 

“Ukraine is very often hard to work with. Many foreign soldiers leave after a week in Ukraine or must move from unit to unit to find a place they are respected and appreciated,” Routh said more than one year after the invasion. He had been “yelled at” for saying they try to recruit the special operators from Afghanistan. “They’re afraid that anybody and everybody is a Russian spy.”

Routh has a long criminal history dating back to his time living in North Carolina decades ago. According to records obtained by the Greensboro News and Record, Routh was charged with more than a dozen misdemeanor offenses ranging from driving with a suspended license to hit and run. After an hours-long standoff with police officers in North Carolina, he was also charged with possessing a “weapon of mass destruction” — a fully automatic rifle in his case — which is a felony. 

The would-be golf course assassination marks the second time in as many months that someone tried to kill Trump, starting with the Butler, Pennsylvania shooter — Thomas Matthew Crooks — who shot Trump in the ear during a rally. Law enforcement has so far not released details about Crooks’s potential motives, though, like Routh, he seemed to have had shifting political allegiances. In 2021, he donated to a fundraising group associate with the Democratic Party and progressive causes, but later registered as a Republican.