Yet More Dribbles Out On The Rouths

Yesterday had two headlines, first, that Routh's son, Oran, was arrested on child pornography charges following an FBI search of his phone related to the investigation of his father. Second, via Politico, US officials looked at Americans traveling to Ukraine to fight. Ryan Routh fell through the cracks. Both raise separate sets of questions.

Regarding the child pornography arrest, leaving the specific charge aside, what we're being told in the corporate media narrative contradicts earlier parts of the media narrative -- for starters, just the puzzle of what Oran had been telling reporters about his father. For instance, as of September 15,

Routh's son, Oran Routh, reached by DailyMail.com shortly after Sunday's shooting, said this was the first he'd heard of the alleged assassination attempt.

'This was the first I heard about it,' the 35-year-old exclusively told DailyMail.com. 'Was my father shot or injured?'

. . . 'He's my dad and all he's had is couple traffic tickets, as far as I know,' the son said. 'That's crazy. I know my dad and love my dad, but that's nothing like him.'

. . . Routh moved to Hawaii a few years back and was living with his longtime girlfriend. He said he didn't know his father was even in Florida.

'He said he was at the beach, but I thought that meant the outer banks in Hawaii,' he said. 'I didn't ask him for more information because we've had a falling out. We've grown apart.'

He wouldn't explain the nature of their 'falling out,' but still spoke highly of his father.

'He's not a violent person,' he said. 'He's a hard worker and a great dad. He's a great dude, a nice guy and has worked his whole f**king life.'

This is at varianmce with the actual record:

Court records showed Routh has a long history of breaking traffic laws, not paying his taxes on time and writing bad checks. But it was in 2002 that he lost his right to own a gun when he pleaded guilty to a felony in North Carolina for possessing an illegal explosive device in April.

Months after his arrest in that case while released on a bond, Routh fled from a traffic stop by a police officer near his home in Greensboro, North Carolina, and barricaded himself inside his roofing business for several hours before police were able to arrest him for having a concealed handgun without a permit, according to court records and a 2002 news article by the Greensboro News & Record.

A few days later, Routh pleaded guilty to possession of what court records described as a "binary explosive with a 10-inch detonation cord and a blasting cap," which is defined in North Carolina law as a weapon of mass destruction and is a felony punishable by up to 59 months in prison, according to the county district attorney's office and the Guilford County Superior Court clerk's office. He was sentenced to probation.

Eight years later, he again pleaded guilty to felonies after he was charged with possession of stolen goods: a blowtorch, a pull-cart and a power cord, according to the district attorney's office. As the owner of several roofing companies, he has been repeatedly sued by people accusing him of not paying his bills.

Oran Routh has apparently been living in Greensboro, NC:

Oran Routh was arrested this week after authorities searched his Greensboro, North Carolina, home “in connection with an investigation unrelated to child exploitation,” an FBI official said in court papers.

Greensboro had also been the Routh family's home town, where Oran's father, Ryan, had been well known to police:

The man accused of pointing a rifle into the golf course where former President Donald Trump was playing last weekend was known in his hometown as something of a bad actor.

“Weird” is how one of Ryan Routh’s former neighbors in Greensboro described him. She told reporters he once had a horse in his house and that he also kept guns.

. . . But if Routh’s neighbors didn’t know him well, the police sure did.

“We were on a first-name basis,” said Eric Rasecke, a now-retired Greensboro police officer whose beat included the areas where Routh lived and worked.

Although on September 15, Oran told the Daily Mail he thought Ryan was back in Hawaii, federal prosecutors said in court Monday:

Routh’s cellphone data shows that he “traveled from the Greensboro, North Carolina, area, to West Palm Beach, Florida,” on Aug. 14, according to the filing in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach.

It's hard not to think Oran knew his father was in town, despite what he'd been telling the press. Even before his child pornography arrest, I have a sense we can't trust a thing he says.

But let's look at the other issue: Ryan, who should have been on a watch list -- as various commentators have pointed out before now -- somehow "fell through a crack". At the Politico link above,

The Department of Homeland Security in 2022 launched an interagency effort to scrutinize Americans returning from Ukraine’s war zone. The previously unreported effort aimed to identify Americans who might turn violent upon their return, according to five people familiar with the plans. Officials worried the Russia-Ukraine war would attract American extremists who would learn combat skills on the battlefield and then attack their fellow Americans when they returned.

Given the mindset of "officials", it's hard to avoid thinking the likely "extremists" would be of the right-wing Trumpist variety, and as long as Routh was anti-Trump, he was fine. But even so, he'd been caught with a "binary explosive with a 10-inch detonation cord and a blasting cap", which you'd think would put him on some kind of list -- you sure you're OK with him getting on a plane? -- and then in 2019, the FBI decided not to follow up on a tip:

Jeffrey Veltri, special agent in charge of the Miami field office, said at a news conference Monday [September 16] that the bureau was tipped off that Routh was a "felon in possession of a firearm."

"In following up on the tip, the alleged complainant was interviewed and did not verify providing the initial information," Veltri said. "The FBI passed that information to local law enforcement in Honolulu."

The investigation was then closed due to lack of additional information.

Apparently the follow-up didn't include finding out about the possession of a weapon of mass destruction charge. Regarding the potential investigation as a returnee from Ukraine, the Politico piece continues,

The episode raises questions about whether the U.S. government is applying the right criteria to assess the risks of Americans who have tried to join the war. Experts say most of the Americans who have fought are U.S. veterans concerned about protecting the fledgling democracy from Russia’s invasion.

Routh, however, was a different story.

“He probably should have been subject, based on his behavior, to some type of threat assessment,” said John Cohen, a former top DHS official who described the effort to POLITICO.

But he was anti-Trump, so not a problem, huh? Sundance observes at The Last Refuge,

As you take off your shoes and undergo extensive scrutiny as a result of the Patriot Act, the subsequently formed DHS and the TSA, it’s worth remembering, as initially sold, the creation of the DHS was specifically intended to stop domestic terror threats, ie. EXACTLY the activity that Ryan Routh was engaged in.

The justification to create the DHS and subsequent intrusive activity of the United States security apparatus, was to stop unstable and sketchy people from carrying out violence internally within the homeland. However, as many voices warned at the time, the mission of the agencies created by The Patriot Act, actualized with DHS and FBI conducting surveillance of parents at school board meetings, monitoring white men in the U.S. military, tracking pastors, preachers and Christian congregations, and registering law-abiding gun owners while the sketchy and unstable simply run amok.

The whole record of Routh's adult life says he was precisely the kind of person who should have been on some kind of watch list.