A New York Times reporter on Tuesday detailed an earlier encounter with suspected gunman Ryan Wesley Routh, who allegedly tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump on Sunday at Trump National Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
in exterior In “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” New York Times reporter Thomas Gibbons recounts how he first met Routh through international connections that began during his time as a reporter in Kabul, when a colleague introduced Gibbons to Routh through an Afghan Special Forces soldier who had fled harsh conditions in Iran.
“I had an Afghan colleague I worked with in Kabul, Majm Rahim, and a friend of his in Iran. He was an ex-Afghan special forces soldier and was looking to go somewhere other than Iran, Afghanistan or Pakistan. He got in touch with Mr. Routh and was promised he would fight in Ukraine. That Afghan soldier started a WhatsApp group and sooner or later hundreds of Afghans were talking to Mr. Routh and that's when I got in touch with him,” Gibbons told Jake Tapper.
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For Gibbons, the suspected plot to assassinate President Trump came as a surprise, and reflecting on the news, he expressed mixed emotions.
“I scratched my head for a while, but then it all fell into place,” Gibbons explained. “I mean, it was sad and surprising to an extent, but at the same time it made a lot of sense. He was, you know, Mr. Routh in a reality that I could sort of see, which made a little bit of sense, but it was clear that he was in another dimension.”
Gibbons used what he knew about Routh's personality to speculate on his possible motives for plotting to assassinate President Trump. Routh, who is known to have had a turbulent past, may have been searching for a new identity through his interactions and involvement with Ukraine, particularly Afghan refugees.
“It was clear to me that, like many, but not all, of the volunteers who went to Ukraine in those first few months, he was trying to reinvent himself. And if you look at his criminal history and his lethargic and slightly lawless history, he certainly was more than a little bit, but I think he wanted to reinvent himself,” Gibbons said. (RELATED: FBI says it received tip about Trump shooter Ryan Wesley Routh's firearm possession in 2019)
“And with what was going on in Ukraine, and especially with helping Afghan refugees, I think he had kind of a larger purpose or something that he hadn't had before.”
Gibbons detail According to the article published on Sunday, Routh said he bribed corrupt officials, forged passports and did whatever it took to transport the Afghan group to Ukraine. Nevertheless, the reporter added that Routh had no viable plan to achieve his goal and had even spoken about organizing a U.S. military transport flight from Iraq to Poland for Afghan refugees willing to join the fight.
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