Suspect in Apparent Trump Assassination Plot Crusaded for Many Causes

The man arrested after apparently plotting to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump at one of his Florida golf courses on Sunday appeared to tell Iran in a rambling self-published book last year that it was “free to assassinate Trump.”

The self-aggrandizing book, titled “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” along with social media posts and other public statements from the suspect, Ryan W. Routh, reflected his intense desire to fight for Ukraine. He also took a dim view of Mr. Trump, referring to him as a “fool,” “idiot” and “buffoon.”

“Democracy has dissolved quickly under our watch,” Mr. Routh wrote, describing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as a catastrophe “perpetrated by Donald Trump and his undemocratic posse.”

How Mr. Routh, a peripatetic activist and building contractor with an extensive criminal record, came to possess a semiautomatic rifle, learn of Mr. Trump’s weekend whereabouts and wait for him on the edge of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., remains unknown.

But a review of public records and Mr. Routh’s writings, as well as interviews with people who knew him, suggest that he saw himself as an active and influential participant in momentous world events, while becoming estranged from at least some of his family and nearly destitute in the process.

Mr. Routh has been a serial crusader for causes large and small dating back to at least 1996, when he campaigned against graffiti in Greensboro, N.C., where he lived for decades. In July, he urged President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the social media platform X to visit the victims of the assassination attempt against Mr. Trump in Butler, Pa., writing that “Trump will never do anything for them.”