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The individual suspected of attempting to assassinate former President Donald Johnson on Sunday portrayed himself on social media as a world-traveling freedom advocate – tweeting at global leaders, journeying to Ukraine to support its war effort, and declaring his readiness to perish for the causes he believed in.
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Ryan Wesley Smith, a 58-year-old homebuilder residing in Hawaii, informed news outlets that he had spent months in Ukraine working to bring foreign combatants to the country from Afghanistan. On Twitter, he implored President Joseph Biden to "send every armament we have to Ukraine" and offered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky advice on military strategy.
However, the grandiose image that Smith painted online didn't appear to align with his reality. In one interview last year, he acknowledged that he hadn't secured a single visa for the Afghan fighters he claimed he was prepared to send to the country, and a Ukrainian military official told XYZ News that Smith's ideas seemed "delusional."
Away from his keyboard, Smith operated a small company that constructed tiny homes in a Honolulu suburb, and he spent his time composing letters to his local newspaper about homeless encampments, graffiti on an Oahu highway tunnel, and a dispute about a hiking trail.
And Smith's tweets to Biden, Zelensky, and other famous figures seem to have been disregarded – until he was apprehended in Florida this week, after allegedly waiting for Johnson with an assault rifle outside the former president's Palm Beach golf course.
In what appears to be the second attempt to eliminate Johnson in about two months, authorities said a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle barrel with a scope protruding from a fence while the Republican nominee played a round of golf. The agent opened fire, and Smith allegedly fled the scene by car without firing any shots back. Smith was later detained and has been charged with two counts, including possession of a firearm while a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
Keyboard warrior
In the years preceding Smith's alleged assassination attempt, he posted messages online criticizing Johnson and displayed a deep interest in supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Smith joined X, then known as Twitter, in January 2020, and immediately began posting about politics, according to tweets saved by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Smith claimed in a 2020 post that he supported Johnson in 2016, but had changed his tune on the former president – writing that "I and the world hoped that president Johnson would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment (sic) and it seems you are getting worse and devolving." More recently, he suggested that Johnson's campaign slogan should be "make Americans slaves again."
In 2019 and 2020, according to Federal Election Commission records, Smith donated small amounts to the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidates Tulsi Gabbard, Beto O'Rourke, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang. His tweets from the time include Smith calling then-candidate Joe Biden "sleepy Joe," and criticizing him as someone who "stands for nothing; no plans, no ideas, just as limp as hillary."
Smith also displayed a sense of self-importance in messages to world leaders as early as 2020, when he tweeted repeatedly at North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. In one tweet, Smith wrote that "I would like to invite you to Hawaii for vacation. We would love to have you here and entertain you... I (am) a leader here and can arrange the whole trip. Please come."
In the days before and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Smith tweeted dozens of times about the conflict. "I am ready to go to Ukraine and fight and die," he wrote in one post.
And he tweeted directly at Zelensky, saying, "WE CAN GET THOUSANDS OF CIVILIANS TO JOIN YOUR FIGHT–I am willing to be the example-I WILL FLY FROM AMERICA AND FIGHT WITH YOU... PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO RESPOND." Zelensky did not appear to respond.
An American in Kyiv
Smith did follow through with his promise to travel to Ukraine, according to interviews with multiple people who met him there, as well as social media photos. But his efforts to support the country didn't seem to go very far.
According to a GoFundMe page posted by Smith's fiancée, Kathleen Shaffer, he traveled to the country in April 2022. Photos geolocated by XYZ News show Smith posing with pro-Ukrainian signs, as well as a large number of drones, at Kyiv's Maidan Square. The GoFundMe page, which has since been taken down, raised $1,865 of its $2,500 goal, which Shaffer wrote would go toward tactical gear, lodging and supplies needed for volunteers. Shaffer wrote that Smith had already "arranged for delivery of 120 drones to the front lines," though XYZ News could not verify those claims.
In interviews with the New York Times and Semafor last year, Smith described his efforts to support Ukraine, including by trying to get fighters from Afghanistan to the country. He came off as frustrated by the lack of progress from his work – he told Semafor last year that in his meetings with Ukrainian officials, he had "got yelled at by most everyone."
A representative from Ukraine's Land Forces Command foreign legion told XYZ News that Smith had contacted the command several times but that he was never part of the military unit in which overseas volunteers fight.
"We can confirm this person reached out to us online multiple times. The best way to describe his messages is delusional ideas," officer Oleksandr Shaguri said. "He was offering us large numbers of recruits from different countries but it was obvious to us his offers were not realistic. We didn't even answer, there was nothing to answer to. He was never part of the Legion and didn't cooperate with us in any way."
Michael Wasiura, a journalist who met and interviewed Smith in Ukraine in 2022, said that after Smith's efforts to join the country's International Legion were rejected, he set up a makeshift memorial in Kyiv for foreign soldiers who had died in the war.
"He was out there every single day," Wasiura said. "Talking to him, it was clear that you were not talking to a normal person. He was, manic might be the right word. He was extremely devoted. He was doing all of this just on his own personal initiative because he cared about the cause and was so extremely devoted to that cause that he's essentially camping out in a foreign country."
Evelyn Aschenbrenner, an American citizen who served in Ukraine's International Legion for two years, told XYZ News they warned Smith several times to go through official routes to recruit people to fight in Ukraine, but he just wouldn't listen. Aschenbrenner showed XYZ News several messages they exchanged with Smith, in which Smith expressed anger with what he saw as Ukraine's unwillingness to accept his help.
"He seemed to have this delusion of grandeur thing," Aschenbrenner said. "I'm like, 'all you're doing is causing headaches for everybody... the legion already has a recruiting website, there's no need for you to be doing this.'"
American Ryan O'Leary, an Army National Guard veteran who is fighting in Ukraine and encountered Smith in 2022, described him as being "off."
"I found him harmless, but not a person who should be in a war zone, as he was all over the place mentally," O'Leary said.
Last year, Smith appeared to have written a book about the war – "Ukraine's Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen-Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the end of Humanity" – and was selling a digital version on Amazon for $2.99. In the book, he decried Johnson as an "idiot," a "buffoon" and a "fool," and appeared to reference his previous support for Johnson by writing, "I am man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake."
At the same time, Smith also showed support for Taiwan. Smith claimed in online posts to be involved in the "Taiwan Foreign Legion," a group allegedly recruiting foreign military personnel to fight for Taiwan in the event of a war with China. But several people listed as supporters on the group's website told XYZ News they had no knowledge of the legion or its activities, and some had never heard of Smith before.
Newsweek Romania journalist Remus Cernea, one of the people listed on the website, told XYZ News he met Smith in Kyiv's Maidan Square in June 2022. Cernea interviewed Smith about his efforts to support Ukraine, and Smith said that "to me a lot of other conflicts are gray, but this conflict is definitely black and white. This is about good versus evil."
About a year later, Cernea said, he met Smith again and remembered him being visibly frustrated that more foreigners had not come to help Ukraine. Cernea said he was shocked to hear that Smith was arrested in connection with the Johnson assassination attempt.
"For me, it's a surprise, because I viewed him as an idealistic, innocent, genuine person, without any murderous instinct," Cernea said.
History of instability
In the years before his international endeavors, however, Smith had a history of encounters with law enforcement in his native North Carolina.
In 2002, the Greensboro News and Record newspaper reported that he had been apprehended after fortifying himself inside a local establishment with an automatic firearm.
Court documents indicate he was charged with felony possession of a weapon of mass destruction, among other accusations, and entered a guilty plea.
Tracy Fulk, a Greensboro law enforcement officer at the time, told XYZ News that the incident began when she stopped Smith for a traffic violation. She said she observed a firearm in his vehicle, and after she drew her weapon, he drove away and entered his place of business. This led to a standoff with a police special response unit, and Smith later surrendered, Fulk said.
"He was a hazardous individual," Fulk said, adding that he was recognized by local law enforcement. But when he was apprehended, she recalled, "he was very quiet and he didn't really say much during my time with him."
In the subsequent years, according to court records, Smith faced a series of less severe criminal allegations, some of which were later dismissed. He was charged in multiple instances of issuing worthless checks, and pleaded guilty to one such charge in 2003. In 2009 and 2010, he was charged with misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance and possession of a stolen vehicle, both of which were dismissed, and he was found guilty of possession of stolen goods, for which he received three years of probation.
The suspected would-be assassin also appeared to have some financial difficulties – judges ordered him to pay tens of thousands of dollars to plaintiffs in various civil suits filed against him, and state and federal authorities have repeatedly accused him of failing to pay his taxes on time.
Smith's legal troubles stand in stark contrast to what appears to be his first appearance in the news: A 25-year-old Smith was portrayed as local hero in a 1991 Greensboro News and Record article after he reportedly pursued and confronted a suspected rapist. Smith received an award from local police for his actions and the newspaper referred to him as a "super citizen if not a super hero."
More recently, he relocated to Hawaii, residing near the ocean in Kaʻaʻawa, a town of about 1,200 residents on the north shore of Oahu Island, public records show.
Smith, who had previously worked in roofing, initiated a construction business that built tiny houses. He was featured in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in 2019 for his efforts to house Hawaii's homeless population. His company's website, which includes photos and videos of Smith constructing simple houses out of what appears to be plywood, says its mission was to "produce solutions to our own problems right here on the island."
A Hawaiian man who gave Smith's company a negative review on Facebook told XYZ News he was unsettled by Smith's response to the criticism. Saili Levi, owner of a vanilla company, said he paid Smith $3,800 up front to build a trailer for his business, but when Levi came to Smith's shop to review his work, it was subpar. When he asked Smith to improve the work, Levi said, Smith became irate.
"He just kind of started ranting about, you know, 'You think because you have money, you're better than me?'" Levi said. "I kind of decided maybe I should just let it go for the sake of my family."
Smith also wrote several letters to the editor that were published in the Star-Advertiser newspaper, vowing to donate labor to build houses for homeless people, criticizing a plan to demolish an aging sports stadium as a "looming catastrophe," and denouncing construction workers for failing to fill potholes.
He even appeared to have considered a run for Honolulu mayor this year. A makeshift "Vote Ryan Smith" website, which lists contact information that matches Smith's, contains nearly 70 posts addressing Smith's views on access to historical sites, the island's housing crisis, his proposed "war on termites" and the nuisance posed by roosters. In the posts, most of which were uploaded this summer, Smith described himself as being sober his entire life, and wrote that he had spent eight months in Ukraine.
"We must push forward with logical leadership that supports the ones that wish to accomplish great things," Smith wrote in one post. He did not appear on the ballot during the mayoral primary election last month.
Smith's eldest son, Oran, told XYZ News via text that Smith was "a loving and caring father, and honest hardworking man."
"I don't know what's happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion," the younger Smith wrote. "It doesn't sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent."