'It sounded ridiculous': NY Times reporter recalls speaking with Trump shooting suspect

A man accused of firing gunshots in an apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump had previously been interviewed by the New York Times about Ukraine.

Times reporter Thomas Gibbons-Ness encountered 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh last year while reporting on unqualified foreign volunteers fighting on the front in Ukraine against Russia. He was put in touch with him through Najim Rahim, an old colleague and friend from Kabul.

"Through the strange nexus of combatants as one war ended and another began, he had learned of Mr. Routh from a source of his in Iran, a former Afghan special operations soldier who was trying to get out of Iran and fight in Ukraine," Gibbons-Ness wrote.

Routh had spent time in Ukraine trying to raise support for the war effort and was seeking recruits among Afghan soldiers who had fled from the Taliban.

“In my opinion everyone should be there supporting the Ukrainians,” said Routh, a former construction worker from Greensboro, North Carolina, adding that he was too old and inexperienced to fight himself.

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Gibbons-Ness said the conversation was brief, and happened when Routh said he was in Washington, D.C., in an effort to meet congressmen to talk about Ukraine — a meeting the reporter wasn't sure actually happened.

He spoke of buying off corrupt overseas officials to get his Afghan comrades to Ukraine, Gibbons-Ness said.

"I shook my head. It sounded ridiculous, but the tone in Mr. Routh’s voice said otherwise," wrote Gibbons-Ness. "He was going to back Ukraine’s war effort, no matter what."