Ryan Wesley Routh portrayed himself online as a man who built housing for homeless people in Hawaii, tried to recruit fighters for Ukraine to defend itself against Russia, and described his support and then disdain for Donald Trump — even urging Iran to kill him.

"You are free to assassinate Trump," Routh wrote of Iran in an apparently self-published book in 2023, "Ukraine's Unwinnable War," which described the former president as a "fool" and "buffoon" for both the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and the "tremendous blunder" of leaving the Iran nuclear deal.