AP
‘Ticking time bomb’: Those who raised suspicions about Trump suspect question if enough was done
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This photo provided by Hédi Aouidj shows Ryan Routh, a suspect in the apparent assassination attempt of Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump, in Maidan, Ukraine on April 10, 2024. (Hédi Aouidj via AP)Read More
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In this imaged released by the Martin County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office, law enforcement officers arrest Ryan Routh, the man suspected in the apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (Martin County Sheriff’s Office via AP)Read More
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Ryan Wesley Routh takes part in a rally in central Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, April 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)Read More
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In this imaged released by the Martin County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office, law enforcement officers arrest Ryan Routh, the man suspected in the apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (Martin County Sheriff’s Office via AP)Read More
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Ryan Wesley Routh takes part in a rally in central Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, April 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)Read More
By BERNARD CONDONUpdated 1:20 AM GMT+6, September 22, 2024Share
The more Chelsea Walsh talked to the eccentric fellow American who seemed to pop up in every square and cobblestone street of Ukraine’s capital, the more she got creeped out.
Walsh was in Kyiv as a nurse and aid worker in the early days of the war in Ukraine. Ryan Routh was there to recruit foreign soldiers to fight the Russians. But Walsh never saw him make much progress and instead watched him grow increasingly angry and unhinged, kicking a panhandler, threatening to burn down a music studio that slighted him and speaking of his own children with seething hatred.
Just as troubling, she said, was Routh’s obsessive, oddly specific plotting to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, describing the various explosives, poisons and cross-border maneuvers that Routh would employ “to kill him in his sleep.”
“Ryan Routh is a ticking time bomb,” she recalled telling U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in an hourlong interview upon returning to the United States at Dulles International Airport near Washington in June 2022. She says she later repeated her concerns in separate tips to both the FBI and Interpol, the international policing group.
Walsh says she never heard back about her tips and she did not think much more about Routh until she saw him in the news last Sunday as the 58-year-old accused of stalking Donald Trump at the former president’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, in an apparent assassination attempt.
Walsh’s account was one of at least four reports to the U.S. government that, while not direct threats to Trump, raised suspicions about Routh in the years leading up to his arrest. Others included a tip to the FBI in 2019 about Routh being in possession of a firearm after a felony conviction, an online report by an aid worker to the State Department last year questioning Routh’s military recruiting tactics, and Routh’s own interview with Customs and Border Protection about those efforts, prompting a referral for a possible inquiry by Homeland Security Investigations.
What was done in response that could have stopped Routh or at least put him under greater scrutiny is not entirely clear. The agencies involved either did not respond to queries from The Associated Press, have no record of such a report or had questions about whether the report warranted further investigation.
But some people are asking whether federal agencies are vigilant enough or even equipped enough to deal with a growing number of potential threats that are brought to their attention every day.
“Federal agencies ought to be on the highest alert to detect and combat these threats,” said Republican Sen Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Congress and the American people need assurance that the federal government is doing all it can.”
Walsh, who lives just a few miles from Trump’s golf course, said she cannot help but think all of this could have been avoided.
“The authorities have definitely dropped the ball on this,” she said. “They were warned.”
Sarah Adams, an ex-CIA officer who was behind the State Department tip, said she decided to act after learning Routh was trying to recruit former Afghan fighters with false promises of spots in the Ukrainian military.
She said she drafted a bulletin urging the 50 humanitarian aid groups she was helping in Ukraine to keep Routh at arm’s length, and she had her company send a similar online report to the State Department.
“There was plenty to look into,” said Adams, who lives in Tampa, Florida. “I don’t know if they even assigned someone to work it.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said there is no record of any complaints about Routh. He said he could not rule out that “someone didn’t have a communication with somebody somewhere.”
Similarly, Customs and Border Protection said it could not confirm Walsh had a meeting with one of its agents because it does not comment on individual cases. The FBI also declined to confirm Walsh’s warning, citing a policy of not commenting on ongoing investigations. Interpol did not respond to a request for comment.
Walsh showed the AP notes that she took while talking to Customs and Border Protection, and a text she sent to a friend about her messages to the FBI and Interpol with a time stamp soon after she sent them.
Routh, a North Carolina construction worker who in recent years moved to Hawaii, was being held on weapons charges related to the Trump case. His federal public defender, Kristy Militello, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
A self-styled mercenary leader, Routh was never shy about speaking out to anyone who would listen about his dangerous, sometimes violent plans to insert himself into conflicts around the world.
He was interviewed by The New York Times, photographed by the AP and other news organizations and appeared in videos from Kyiv making his pitch for foreign fighters. He put out a self-published book last year on Amazon, “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” in which he writes of the wisdom of a well-timed killing of a world leader to change history.
“You are free to assassinate Trump,” Routh wrote, referring to Iran in retaliation for the former president’s decision to abandon the U.S. nuclear deal with that country. Routh went on to describe Trump, whom he had voted for in 2016, as a “fool” and “buffoon” for the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and for pushing a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine.
Walsh said she initially found the wiry, floppy-haired Routh to be just bizarre. But as time went on, she got a darker vibe from the way Routh lurked in the streets, seemed to be everywhere and kept tabs on everyone.
She watched as Routh kicked a homeless man begging for money and then snarled, “The Ukrainians should be paying me for what I am doing here!” She said he talked of his grown children with such hatred — “I wish I never had them” — that it frightened her. She remembers how he threatened to burn down a music studio because people there laughed at him over a song he wrote.
“Ryan was the kind of guy who would blow up a building on Tuesday, just because he felt like it,” Walsh said.
Routh’s musings about killing Putin were echoed in his book published last year that describes an even more far-fetched plan for someone with no military experience: launching thousands of weaponized drones to flatten Putin’s many residences.
But in the end, he wrote, the Ukrainians and disaffected Russians he hoped to recruit as accomplices lost their “courage and will” to pull it off.
In 2019, three years before Routh flew to Kyiv to build a foreign legion, the FBI followed up on a tip that he was in possession of a firearm despite felony convictions from years earlier.
But when questioned, the alleged tipster backed off and did not verify providing the initial information. The FBI then referred the matter to Hawaiian law enforcement for further investigation. Honolulu police confirmed this week they were looking into it.
In June 2023, Routh was pulled aside by Customs and Border Protection agents at the Honolulu airport when returning from Ukraine, Poland and Turkey, and asked about his activities overseas.
As first reported by the website Just the News and confirmed in congressional testimony this past week, documents show Routh told them he had been recruiting as many as 100 fighters from Afghanistan, Moldova and Taiwan, and that his wife was paying for his efforts.
Routh also gave agents a business card that claimed he was the director of a group called the International Volunteer Center.
The documents state that the agents referred Routh’s case to Homeland Security Investigations for further scrutiny but it declined to pursue the matter.
In congressional testimony Wednesday, Katrina Berger, executive associate director of the agency, noted that it gets hundreds of such requests a day and that Routh’s comments did not rise to the level to take him into “immediate custody.”
Asked specifically to confirm whether a further investigation was declined, she said she was not sure and would look into it.
Routh’s criminal history in his native Greensboro, North Carolina, includes a 2002 arrest for eluding a traffic stop and barricading himself from officers with a fully automatic machine gun and a “weapon of mass destruction,” which turned out to be an explosive with a 10-inch-long fuse.
In 2010, police searched a warehouse Routh owned and found more than 100 stolen items, from power tools and building supplies to kayaks and spa tubs. Police alleged in an affidavit that he was selling the items to purchase crack cocaine.
In both felony cases, court records show judges gave Routh either probation or a suspended sentence, allowing him to escape prison time.
Tracy Fulk, a now-retired Greensboro police officer who arrested Routh in the long-ago armed standoff, said she was not surprised by last week’s news about Routh.
“Remembering all the alerts and run-ins and stuff,” she said, “he was kind of ‘out there.’”
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Associated Press writers Michael Biesecker, Eric Tucker, Matthew Lee and Rebecca Santana in Washington; Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu; Makiya Seminera in Greensboro, North Carolina; Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Joshua Goodman in Miami; and news researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
AP
The final day of voting in the US is here, after tens of millions have already cast their ballots
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People stand in line during the last day of early voting, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)Read More
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Voters line up to vote as a early voting location opened in Carmel, Ind., Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
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A person walks past a sign during early voting in the general election, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024, in Fall River, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
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An election worker demonstrates mail-in ballot processing during a media preview at the Philadelphia Election Warehouse, in Philadelphia, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
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A voter fills out their their ballot during early voting in the general election, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024, in Fall River, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
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People line up to vote at the Chicago Early Voting Loop Supersite in Chicago, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
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Bennett College student Zairen Jackson listens to a fellow student answer a question during a roundtable in Greensboro, N.C., Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)
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FILE – A Delaware County secured drop box for the return of vote-by-mail ballots is pictured, May 2, 2022, in Newtown Square, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
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An elections official sorts counted mail-in ballots on the first day of tabulation, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024, at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt York)
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People wait in line to cast their ballots at an early voting location, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Blue Springs, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
BY CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY AND ALI SWENSONUpdated 11:05 AM GMT+6, November 5, 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — Election Day 2024 arrived Tuesday — with tens of millions of Americans having already cast their ballots. Those include record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.
The early turnout in Georgia, which has flipped between the Republican and Democratic nominees in the previous two presidential elections, has been so robust — over 4 million voters — that a top official in the secretary of state’s office said the big day could look like a “ghost town” at the polls.
As of Monday, Associated Press tracking of advance voting nationwide showed roughly 82 million ballots already cast — slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier. That’s driven partly by Republican voters, who were casting early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats’ longstanding advantage in the early vote.
That included in the parts of western North Carolina hammered last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, pulled off a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots as they dealt with power outages, lack of water and washed out roads.
By the time early voting in North Carolina had ended on Saturday, over 4.4 million voters — or nearly 57% of all registered voters in the state — had cast their ballots. As of Monday, turnout in the 25 western counties affected by the hurricane was even stronger at 59% of registered voters, state election board Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said.
Brinson Bell called the voters and election workers in the hurricane-hit counties “an inspiration to us all.”
Besides the hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most worrisome disruptions to the election season so far were arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. Authorities there were searching for the person responsible.
The absence of any significant, widespread problems has not stopped Trump, the Republican nominee, or the RNC, which is now under his sway, from making numerous claims of fraud or election interference during the early voting period, a possible prelude to challenges after Election Day.
He has mischaracterized an investigation underway in Pennsylvania into roughly 2,500 potentially fraudulent voter registration applications by saying one of the counties was “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person.” The investigation is into registration applications; there is no indication that ballots are involved.
In Georgia, Republicans sought to prohibit voters from returning mailed ballots to their local election office by the close of polls on Election Day, votes that are allowed under state law. A judge rejected their lawsuit over the weekend.
Trump and Republicans also have warned about the possibility that Democrats are recruiting masses of noncitizens to vote, a claim they have made without evidence and that runs counter to the data, including from Republican secretaries of state. Research has consistently shown that noncitizens registering to vote is rare. Any noncitizen who does faces the potential of felony charges and deportation, a significant disincentive.
One case of noncitizen voting was caught during early voting last month and resulted in felony charges in Michigan after a student from China cast an illegal early ballot.
This is the first presidential vote since Trump lost to Joe Biden four years ago and began various attempts to circumvent the outcome and remain in power. That climaxed with the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to halt certification of the results after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell.”
Even now, a solid majority of Republicans believe Trump’s lie that Biden was not legitimately elected, despite reviews, audits and recounts in the battleground states that all affirmed Biden’s win. A survey last month from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed Republicans remain much more skeptical than Democrats that their ballots will be counted accurately this year.
Seeking to rebuild voter confidence in a system targeted with false claims of widespread fraud, Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states since 2020 have passed new voting restrictions. Those rules include shortening the window to apply or return a mail ballot, reducing the availability of ballot drop boxes and adding ID requirements.
On the last weekend before Election Day, Trump continued to falsely claim the election was being rigged against him and said a presidential winner should be declared on election night, before all the ballots are counted.
Vice President Kamala Harris urged voters not to fall for Trump’s tactic of casting doubt on elections. The Democratic nominee told supporters at a weekend rally in Michigan that the tactic was intended to suggest to people “that if they vote, their vote won’t matter.” Instead, she urged people who had already cast ballots to encourage their friends to do the same.
Through four years of election lies and voting-related conspiracy theories, local election officials have faced harassment and even death threats. That has prompted high turnover and led to heightened security for election offices and polling sites that includes panic buttons and bullet-proof glass.
While there have been no major reports of any malicious cyberactivity affecting election offices, foreign actors have been active in using fake social media profiles and websites to drum up partisan vitriol and disinformation. In the final weeks, U.S. intelligence officials have attributed to Russia multiple fake videos alleging election fraud in presidential swing states.
On the eve of Election Day, they issued a joint statement with federal law enforcement agencies warning that Russia in particular was ramping up its influence operations, including in ways that could incite violence, and likely would continue those efforts well after the votes have been cast.
Jen Easterly, the nation’s top election security official, urged Americans to rely on state and local election officials for information about elections.
“This is especially important as we are in an election cycle with an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation being aggressively peddled and amplified by our foreign adversaries at a greater scale than ever before,” she said. “We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.”
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The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Swenson reports on election-related misinformation, disinformation and extremism for The Associated Press.
AP
Georgia high court says absentee ballots must be returned by Election Day, even in county with delay
Updated 5:13 AM GMT+6, November 5, 2024
ATLANTA (AP) — Thousands of voters in Georgia’s third-largest county who received their absentee ballots late will not get an extension to return them, the state’s highest court decided on Monday.
Cobb County, just north of Atlanta, didn’t mail out absentee ballots to some 3,400 voters who had requested them until late last week. Georgia law says absentee ballots must be received by the close of polls on Election Day. But a judge in a lower court ruled last week that the ballots at issue could be counted if they’re received by this Friday, three days after Election Day, as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday.
The Georgia Supreme Court ruling means the affected Cobb County residents must vote in person on Election Day, which is Tuesday, or bring their absentee ballots to the county elections office by 7 p.m. that day.
The high court ruling instructs county election officials to notify the affected voters by email, text message and in a public message on the county election board’s website. And it orders officials to keep separate and sealed any ballots received after the Election Day deadline but before 5 p.m. Friday.
Board of elections Chair Tori Silas said the board will comply with the Supreme Court order, but it’s still up in the air whether ballots received after Election Day will be counted. The order only addressed a motion for a stay, so election officials will have to wait for the court’s final ruling to see whether votes received after Tuesday will be counted, she said in a statement.
To deliver the ballots on time, election officials in Cobb County were using U.S. Postal Service express mail and UPS overnight delivery, and sending the ballots with prepaid express return envelopes. The Board of Elections said that more than 1,000 of the absentee ballots being mailed late were being sent to people outside of Georgia.
Silas last week blamed the delay in sending out the ballots on faulty equipment and a late surge in absentee ballot requests during the week before the Oct. 25 deadline.
The original ruling extending the deadline stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of three Cobb County voters who said they had not received absentee ballots by mail as of Friday.
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Elon Musk is pledging to give away $1 million a day to voters for signing his political action committee’s petition backing the Constitution. The giveaway by the Donald Trump supporter is raising questions among some who say it’s a violation of the law.Read More
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America PAC lawyer Chris Gober speaks with members of the media ahead of a hearing at a City Hall courtroom in Philadelphia, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
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Elon Musk speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner arrives for a hearing at a City Hall courtroom, in Philadelphia, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
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America PAC lawyer Chris Gober speaks with members of the media ahead of a hearing at a City Hall courtroom in Philadelphia, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
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Elon Musk speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, third from right, arrives for a hearing at a City Hall courtroom, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
BY MARYCLAIRE DALEUpdated 4:19 AM GMT+6, November 5, 2024Share
Follow live: Updates from AP’s coverage of the presidential election.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes that Elon Musk ‘s political action committee is hosting in swing states can continue through Tuesday’s presidential election, a Pennsylvania judge ruled Monday.
Common Pleas Court Judge Angelo Foglietta — ruling after Musk’s lawyers said the winners are paid spokespeople and not chosen by chance — did not immediately explain his reasoning.
District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, had called the process a scam “designed to actually influence a national election” and asked that it be shut down.
Musk lawyer Chris Gober said the final two recipients before Tuesday’s presidential election will be in Arizona on Monday and Michigan on Tuesday.
“The $1 million recipients are not chosen by chance,” Gober said Monday. “We know exactly who will be announced as the $1 million recipient today and tomorrow.”
Chris Young, the director and treasurer of America PAC, testified that the recipients are vetted ahead of time, to “feel out their personality, (and) make sure they were someone whose values aligned” with the group.
Musk’s lawyers, defending the effort, called it “core political speech” given that participants sign a petition endorsing the U.S. Constitution. They also said Krasner’s bid to shut it down under Pennsylvania law was moot because there would be no more Pennsylvania winners before the program ends Tuesday.
Young also acknowledged that the PAC made the recipients sign nondisclosure agreements.
“They couldn’t really reveal the truth about how they got the money, right?” Summers asked.
“Sounds right,” Young said.
In an Oct. 20 social media post shown in court, Musk said anyone signing the petition had “a daily chance of winning $1M!”
Summers grilled him on Musk’s use of both the words “chance” and “randomly,” prompting Young to concede the latter was not “the word I would have selected.”
Young said the winners knew they would be called on stage but not specifically that they would win the money.
Musk did not attend the hearing. He has committed more than $70 million to the super PAC to help Trump and other Republicans win in November.
“This was all a political marketing masquerading as a lottery,” Krasner testified Monday. “That’s what it is. A grift.”
Lawyers for Musk and the PAC said they do not plan to extend the lottery beyond Tuesday. Krasner said the first three winners, starting on Oct. 19, came from Pennsylvania in the days leading up to the state’s Oct. 21 voter registration deadline.
Other winners came from the battleground states of Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan. It’s not clear if anyone has yet received the money. The PAC pledged they would get it by Nov. 30, according to an exhibit shown in court.
More than 1 million people from the seven states have registered for the sweepstakes by signing a petition saying they support the right to free speech and to bear arms, the first two amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Krasner questioned how the PAC might use their data, which it will have on hand well past the election.
“They were scammed for their information,” Krasner said. “It has almost unlimited use.”
Krasner’s team called Musk “the heartbeat of America PAC,” and the person announcing the winners and presenting the checks.
“He was the one who presented the checks, albeit large cardboard checks. We don’t really know if there are any real checks,” Summers said.
Foglietta presided over the case at Philadelphia City Hall after Musk and the PAC lost an effort to move it to federal court.
Krasner has said he could still consider criminal charges, as he’s tasked with protecting both lotteries and the integrity of elections.
Pennsylvania remains a key battleground state with 19 electoral votes and both Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris have repeatedly visited the state, including stops planned Monday in the final hours of the campaign.
Krasner — who noted that he has long driven a Tesla — said he could also seek civil damages for the Pennsylvania registrants. Musk is the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla. He also owns the social media platform X, where America PAC has published posts on the sweepstakes, and the rocket ship maker SpaceX.
Dale covers national legal issues for The Associated Press, often focusing on the federal judiciary, gender law, #MeToo and NFL player concussions. Her work unsealing Bill Cosby’s testimony in a decade-old deposition led to his arrest and sexual assault trials.
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