Reporter who interviewed Trump assassination suspect in 2023 'instantly' recalled interaction: 'He seemed off'

A reporter who previously interviewed the man accused of trying to carry out a second assassination attempt on former President Trump said she "instantly" recalled the interaction with the would-be assassin. 

The Free Press reporter Tanya Lukyanova interviewed 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh for a Semafor story in March 2023 on Ukraine turning down foreign fighters who wanted to aid in the war against Russia. Lukyanova spoke about her interaction with Routh during "America's Newsroom."

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"He seemed off," Lukyanova told co-anchors Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino on Monday. "If you look at the video interview, you can see like it looks like it's a scene out of a Coen Brothers movie… he seems distraught, but then at the same time, he wasn't even the most colorful of the big personalities that I spoke to as part of the story."

Routh was arrested Sunday afternoon after fleeing Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla. Authorities said Secret Service agents fired at him after seeing the muzzle of his AK-47 pointing through a chain-link fence one hole ahead of where Trump was playing.

Lukyanova said she got a call from her editor at Semafor, bringing to her attention the identity of the suspect and the fact that she interviewed him for the Ukraine story last year. 

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"I instantly remembered him. He was a very colorful personality when I interviewed him," Lukyanova said. "I was working on a story about the U.S.-trained, elite Afghan commandos who wanted to join the Ukraine war effort, and… he created something called the International Volunteer Legion, which was this liaison between international fighters who want to join Ukraine effort and Ukrainian Defense Ministry and other various government organizations." 

"He was doing a lot of work for them," she continued. "Actually, he traveled to Ukraine and lived there for five months... A source from inside [the] Ukrainian government gave me his contact info as one of the most active… volunteers working in this area of bringing international fighters."

She said during the time of the interview, Routh was in Washington, D.C., to meet with lawmakers to push for the United States to do more in Ukraine's war effort against Russia. 

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It was unclear if he ever actually met with anyone on Capitol Hill. 

"He really supported the Ukrainian cause," Lukyanova said. "He was really pushing for the U.S. to do more to help Ukraine."

"I never talked to him again. I didn't even know… until last night about his… political affiliations," she continued. 

Routh currently lives in Hawaii and has faced dozens of run-ins with police, stretching back to at least the 1990s, according to a background check. 

He is a native of North Carolina, where his list of arrests includes simple drug possession, driving without a license, expired inspection and operating a vehicle with no insurance. In addition, the Greensboro News & Record reported in 2002 that Routh was arrested after barricading himself in his roofing company's office during a three-hour standoff that followed a traffic stop in which he put his hand on a gun before fleeing.

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Despite his rap sheet and her "off" feeling at the time of the interview, Lukyanova was shocked at the lengths Routh appeared to go to in order to assassinate the former president. 

"He never struck me as a would-be assassin of a former president," Lukyanova said. "He just seemed like a little bit overzealous and… help supporting the right cause."

Fox News' Emma Colton and Brooke Curto contributed to this report. 

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