The Disturbing Details Of Would-Be Donald Trump Assassin Ryan Routh's Letter

Ryan Wesley Routh's life makes for baffling reading. Much of it was passed in good-natured, middle-class obscurity. His son has insisted to media outlets like The Washington Post that Routh was a good father. But he had numerous run-ins with the law, most seriously on charges of possessing explosives and concealed weapons, and resisting an officer, in 2002. A move to Hawaii in 2018 seemingly came with a focus on construction and nonprofit work, until Routh became obsessed with the Russo-Ukrainian War. Those who encountered Routh in his European ventures describe him as unstable and ineffective. And his voting records and social media activity show confused and often changing figures of support.

Among Routh's shifts was repudiating his support for Donald Trump in 2016. His about-face was so total that, in a self-published screed from 2023 (via Politico), he wrote that the Iranian government had every right to kill Trump for abandoning America's nuclear deal with the country and that he, Routh, deserved assassination for having once supported Trump. In the same book, he claimed he was likely to be assassinated by either Russia or the Taliban; Routh had developed an ill-advised scheme to smuggle Afghan fighters through Iran into Ukraine.

A year after publishing his book, Routh became the second would-be assassin to target Trump in 2024. Unlike Thomas Matthew Crooks, Routh survived to be taken into custody. Also unlike Crooks was the paper trail Routh allegedly left behind — specifically, a note explicitly describing his intent to assassinate a former president and his hopes for further violence should he fail.

Ryan Wesley Routh's purported letter detailing his intent to assassinate Donald Trump was released to the public several weeks after his failed attempt. Per CNN, Routh left a box with an unnamed individual that was full of phones, tools, ammunition, and messages, though the person Routh left the package with claims they didn't open it until news broke of the failed assassination. There were reportedly several letters included in the box; as of September 23, 2024, only one has been publicized.

That letter, which is addressed to "The World," explicitly stated that Routh meant to kill Trump, and it takes it for granted that Routh failed. He goes on from there to implore anyone else to follow in his footsteps. "Everyone across the globe from the youngest to the oldest know that Trump is unfit to be anything, much less a U.S. president," Routh wrote (per HuffPost). He offered $150,000 to anyone who successfully killed Trump.

In his comments on Trump's unfitness for office, Routh's alleged letter echoed comments he left in his self-published book. His apology addressed to Iran ended with the ominous statement that "[n]o one here in the U.S. seems to have the balls to put natural selection to work or even unnatural selection" (via NPR).

Just as he addressed the Iranian government directly in his e-book, Ryan Wesley Routh had words about Iran in his alleged letter detailing his assassination efforts. Routh was contemptuous of Trump's foreign policy in general, giving him credit only for attempting diplomacy with North Korea (per NBC News). But after the Ukrainian conflict, Iran seems to have been a particular sore spot for Routh. He allegedly complained in the letter about Donald Trump's handling of American relations with Iran. The former president "ended relations with Iran like a child," Routh wrote, "and now the Middle East has unraveled."

Iran has been implicated in its own attempts to assassinate Trump. Earlier in 2024, the U.S. Justice Department charged a Pakistani man, Asif Merchant, with trying to organize just such an attack (per CNN). And Trump's Secret Service protection was increased following an intelligence report on Iranian intentions against him. There is no evidence at this time to connect Routh (or Thomas Matthew Crooks, Trump's other failed assassin) to Iran, but before Routh's identity was confirmed, journalist Yashar Ali raised the possibility that the foiled September attack might be an effort of an Iran proxy on his X (formerly Twitter) account.