FBI raids Hawaii home of man suspect of attempting to kill former President Trump
HONOLULU COUNTY, Hawaii (NBC, KYMA/KECY) - The FBI raided a Kaaawa home on Tuesday, looking for evidence against Ryan Routh, the man suspected of attempting to kill former President Donald Trump.
The evidence experts spent about six hours at the home a search that was expected sooner because former resident Ryan Routh was arrested Sunday. but former Special Agent Tom Simon said the delay wasn't surprising.
"It's not uncommon for that to take a little bit of time, and it also depends on what's the likelihood that evidence inside that house is going to be destroyed. There's probably no one in that house who's going to destroy evidence, including this guy's wife at this point, because she must have a sense of self preservation herself."
Tom Simon, Former FBI Special Agent
Because Routh is reportedly not confessing he planned to kill Trump, evidence in the house could be crucial.
"Even if a defendant has not confessed to the FBI, it doesn't mean they haven't confessed to other people or in their written works, such as a manuscript that might be found in the home. So those are the types of things the FBI is going to be searching for in a search warrant of his Hawaii house," Simon explained.
Meanwhile, many in Hawaii are searching their own memories for interactions with the now-infamous Kaaawa carpenter, who built tiny structures for a living.
One of them is Saili Levi, who farms vanilla in Laie, and hired Routh to build a display box for his vanilla products at Farm Fairs, but Routh was hard to pin down.
"He said he was in Ukraine, trying to help with the war there, with against Russia, and so that's about the extent of what he was telling me. I didn't want to get too much into it with him. I just wanted him to get started on my project," Levi shared.
In an angry review, Levi said the project was a mess and after paying $3,800, he wanted Routh to fix many defects, which he refused.
What he got back was a perplexing email rant. Routh wrote:
"I spent 5 months in ukraine last year and 3 months there this year, and 2 weeks in dc and 2 weeks in taiwan this year volunteering and trying to supply thousands of afghan soldiers to help win the war and I spent thousands of dollars supporting freedom, human rights and democracy around the world and I come back to bull----such as this."
Routh wrote, closing with, "China and Russia will certainly win at this rate. You disappoint me as a human."
"Definitely the email kind of helped me step back and be like, it's not worth it," Levi expressed.
When asked if he took it as a threat, Levi said, "I didn't feel threatened by him. I mean, he's an older gentleman, but looking back at it now, with this whole, with, you know, this whole story in life, it's a good thing that maybe I didn't pursue him, you know, because maybe it could have been different...you could have been the one to set him off..possibly, yeah."
The story of exactly how volatile may have been found in the Kaawa house.
