(09-17-2024, 05:05 AM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote: Make it make sense. Ryan Routh was caught in 2002 with a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION!?
...AND GOT PROBATION!?
It's a many-layered burrito.
First, don't give this guy so much credit. He's a Barney Fife trying to play in an Dirty Harry world.
The "WMD" charge was for a full auto machine gun. It was a State charge, not Federal, so the state got to play it any way they wanted.
With that said, the Feds will often use those sorts of state charges that also have Federal implications to force folks to play with Fed's ball. In this case, it looks to me like they needed a patsy. So, they probably SUPPLIED him with the MG, then rolled over on him to the locals, let the state play it's role with minimal oversight, and then held the potential of Federal charges and prison time over his head to gain his "cooperation". It happens that way a lot more than we would like to think. Unwary idiots often get caught in those sorts of traps trying to play in a world they don't comprehend.
He's probably being used as a patsy, a public face for some private shenanigans, a sacrificial goat to throw to the wolves while the actual behind the scenes culprits make a clean getaway. That's why he was apparently trying to do "mercenary recruitment" for a Ukrainian venture WAY too goddamned publicly. That's not how real mercenary recruitment works.
So, the Agency lets him traipse around various countries going a-recruiting in the limelight while they are quietly doing the real work in the shadows. Thataway, Routh draws all the attention away from them.
Just listening to his "recruiting" videos, one can tell right off that he ain't no kind of criminal mastermind.
Listening to him talk, and reading what he's written (both of which are rapidly vanishing from the internet now that the deeds are done), he is a True Believer. That makes him just a little dangerous, but not very bright at all. He's like a fucking puppy trying to get someone's approval, and that's about all.
I can also tell you I was there the night he was arrested. Not "there" as in on that site, but "there" as in working on West Lee Street. At that time, it was a pretty rough neighborhood, with lots of gang activity and break-ins rampant, so they had beefed up security for several blocks of the neighborhood, had a lot of "off duty" police officers hanging around, and police car patrols were about doubled. I was doing night-watch at a diamond store, a pretty high-value target for break-ins.
PURE SPECULATIONS:
Now ask yourself - what was a Barney Fife, True-Believing Do Gooder doing down in that neighborhood with a full-auto "machine gun" that God only knows where he got it? Reminded me of that Matunis character in the original Highlander movie, and he's damned lucky the cops got him before his vigilante career met with a harsh end just like Matunis' did.
As a "True Believer", all a handler would have to do is drop a suggestion that Trump will pull out of his pet project in the Ukraine, and his own damaged psyche would do the rest. In his own mind, he was The Hand of God, doing God's Work on that golf course, "secure" in the "knowledge" that his handlers would pull his fat out of the fire if he happened to fall into the grease as was his usual disposition. Won't it be a hoot if they DON'T pull his fat out of the fire?
However, I do note that again his charges are (i believe) state charges, and pretty damned lightweight regardless of whether State or Federal for a presumed would-be assassin, so who knows?
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