The Daily Signal - Act of Terror: What to Know About FBI Investigation into NOLA Nightmare

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Starting point is 00:00:25 We'd love to talk, business. The FBI is searching for answers following a terrorist attack in New Orleans that left 15 people dead. I'm Virginia Allen, and this is a Daily Signal bonus edition. It's Thursday, January 2nd. And joining me now is Cully Stimson. He serves as a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He's also an expert in homeland, security, crime prevention, and immigration. Collie, welcome back to the Daily Signal podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:01 Great to be with you. I wish these were better circumstances that were, joining together today to discuss, but want to look at what we know right now in relation to what happened in New Orleans in the wee, we, we hours following ringing in the new year. This was supposed to be a joyful and happy event for so many people. And it was until it wasn't. Let's talk about what we know about this man who has been found to have been driving this vehicle. He was found to have an ISIS flag in his truck, but his past in many ways is pretty normal. He served in our military. He worked in corporate America. He had family, though he was

Starting point is 00:01:45 divorced. How does someone like that become radicalized? We don't know with respect to this guy yet. Yeah. But you're right. He was born in Beaumont, Texas. He went into the army. He was The IT guy, among other jobs, he then got out, went to corporate America, was a real estate guy, seemed to have a normal life. But if you look at the pictures of him from the time he was in the army where he was squared away and had a high and tight, and then corporate America, we looked like a corporate dude. And then all of a sudden he gets this, you know, typical jihadi beard and the look in his eyes changed. Take a look at that. I mean, I've been around terrorists. I've been around the worst or the worst, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Starting point is 00:02:28 they got a look. All right. And so we don't know what ISIS or followers of ISIS or what he was drawn to about ISIS. But, you know, when you think about people like him or the Fort Hood shooter or the shooter at Pensacola or even Bradley Manning, you know, why he was willing to betray his country and take up, take it upon himself to to break into databases and provide. the biggest amount of intelligence trove to WikiLeaks who then provided it to our enemy, which resulted in people killed and billions of dollars. We just don't know why people do these things. The irony here, Virginia, among many ironies, is on the 6th of December, 2024, the FBI and the CIA in the National Counterterrorism Center put out a memo. It's unclassified,

Starting point is 00:03:25 and it warns about potential for upcoming lone person attacks by either homegrown terrorists or terrorist-inspired people in the United States who will go after Americans at large events with simple means, including ramming people with a vehicle. So that is in their own memo to the field. And so you can never prevent 100% of these things. On one level, this was sophisticated, took a lot of planning. On another level, it was a dude in a truck who evaded a barrier and drove at a high rate of speed. How many people driving a high rate of speed as they're listening to this?

Starting point is 00:04:05 Of course, they're following the law. So we don't know yet. Okay. I want to talk more about the local response and kind of prevention measures in a second. But let's talk a little bit more about the planning. Because you said in a way this was complicated to plan, maybe sophisticated. That brings us to the question of did he act alone? Authorities are saying they don't think he did. There's maybe other people involved. What do we know about that? Well, we know that the FBI now says that there are more than one persons who helped him. And so I suspect with all of the surveillance camera stuff that you're starting to see and then people with cell phones who were just recording because they were out for a night of revelry and uploading their videos to the FBI will get a lot more of a picture of whether they scope that scene out beforehand, whether they knew perhaps that that metal ballard that was supposed to go up wasn't operational. You know, they could have put those

Starting point is 00:05:01 big concrete two-ton ballards, those big fat, ugly round things at the front and back end of Bourbon Street, and that truck would not have gone through that. But they had one of those electronic gates that apparently wasn't going up. So I'm sure there'll be surveillance video of him or accomplices that worked with him to surveil that beforehand. How much earlier, I don't know. and then, you know, look, we saw what happened in Europe during the Christmas market. We've seen this, you know, this horrible type of event before, whether he was inspired by that, whether he had other plans, but decided this was the best plan. Maybe he had a totally different plan, but then when the electronic gate wasn't going up,

Starting point is 00:05:46 he's like, well, I'll rent a truck and mow people down. So it's evil, no matter how you look at it. But, you know, that memo, which I'm sure you can post in the show notes, when people read it, it's like he read it. It's like, oh, there you go. Large Christmas events where large gatherings happened. Watch out for, you know, mowing people down with a truck or car. It's like, you know, it's, I'm not saying the FBI inspired him to do it. I'm not saying that at all.

Starting point is 00:06:16 What I'm saying is that they're acutely aware that these large events with. you just can't have 100% protection in these large events. And I think that's prudent why they canceled the football game to get a better sense of what the other threat, if any, is out there. That's just prudent. Well, then do you hold local and state law enforcement at all, you know, accountable for what happened? Or like you said, is it just no matter what you do, you can have all the security in place? And still, if people are bent on doing evil, it's hard to stop. that 100% of the time. Look, I think it's too early to point fingers except at the murderer.

Starting point is 00:06:58 Yeah. And there'll be a time for that if there were mistakes made or if there were obvious clues that they should have seen or acted on. And, you know, you keep hearing this, you know, if you see something, say something, you know, maybe somebody saw something before or said something and somebody blew it off. Maybe it showed up on somebody's cue in their computer and their way on holiday and didn't follow up. Maybe some loved one or friend of this dude said, look, he's acting like a nut job. He's going to do something and somebody didn't follow up that. But we don't know that yet. And so I think we need, you know, I'm a fax guy, like I said to you. And I like to wait till facts come out. And the political blaming has already

Starting point is 00:07:38 started, right? I don't do that. I focus on facts and what we can do wrong, but to do right. But you cannot make this Fort America. You can't protect against 100% of these. things. We still live in a free society with a constitution and a bill of rights. And so, you know, we're going to have a Super Bowl. We're going to have these bowl games. We're going to have other big sporting events. We're going to have the World Cup in 2026, you know, the biggest sporting event in the world in a couple of years. So we have to be able to live our lives, but we also have to trust that the people we give the privilege of serving in senior government positions are doing their job and on the watch 24-7, 365. It's critical.

Starting point is 00:08:22 As this investigation is continuing, really just starting in so many ways, but it's been less than 48 hours since this tragedy, what are the questions that are being asked right now? Specifically, I'm thinking about federal agencies, the FBI. What are the big questions that they are asking and searching for answers to? Well, you know, it's a multi-layered investigation. So at the upper level, at the classified level, they're seeing whether they're any contacts with foreign people. They're seeing they may be using surveillance tools. and checking surveillance databases like the 702 database, etc. They may be...

Starting point is 00:08:59 What is the 702 database? That's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA, remember it was extended. It's only extended through March, by the way, of this year. Okay. So they may be seen whether he's been in communication with people overseas. Okay. All right.

Starting point is 00:09:12 And we record the content of those communications, not just the who called, you know, when they called the metadata. So at the upper level, They'll look at that. They'll look at his social media profile and other encrypted communication devices if he had any. If they can break into those, they will. If they can't, they may get help from outside vendors who can help with that. At the unclass level, they're going to search other databases, including video. I'm sure there are toll roads, cameras. And then I said regular American people, visitors have been told to upload their video to the FBI databases. his credit card footprint, his bank account information, because he's dead. They're not collecting it for purposes of a prosecution. They're collecting it for purposes of developing a thorough understanding of what if any clues were missed. And maybe there weren't any clues missed. Maybe he's just a dude who just took it upon himself to do a horrific thing. And not much could have been done to stop him.

Starting point is 00:10:17 I mean, here's an ex-army guy, right, who rents a truck. What what rider truck person going to say, you know what, I'm not renting you a truck. I mean, that's just not America, right? And so we don't know, we don't know, to quote my old boss, Don Rumsfeld. And so, but this multi-disciplinary process where the FBI, the feds have the lead, they have access to databases that local officials don't. And that's the way it needs to be. But then we have a new Congress. And the new Congress, no doubt, will conduct or consider conducting oversight hearings at the unclass and then in closed setting to find out what stuff in the background that the intelligence services knew, if anything. And there's a lot more of this story. We'll find out more

Starting point is 00:11:03 about this story. And I wouldn't be surprised if the Trump administration and leaders in the national security space put together an after-action report because, you know, Biden only has a couple more weeks in office. And so this is always a vulnerable time in America because you're You know, you have one president at a time, but this president is to be charitable, not with his A game anymore. And you have a president who has an A-plus game and a lot of vigor. But this period is dangerous. And we don't want to send a signal to the enemies of the United States, foreign or domestic, that we're going to let our guard down. And that's really important to show strength and resolve.

Starting point is 00:11:47 You have studied ISIS quite extensively. You've written on them before. Is it quite common for them to target individuals for radicalization to say, okay, this is someone that maybe has some ties to the Middle East or family members who grew up in the Middle East. So, you know, we're going to target them with certain intentions of trying to radicalize them. Is that normal? Well, I mean, is that a common practice of theirs? Yes, it's not normal to be a terrorist. But it is a common practice for al-Qaeda and then member ISIS was created in 2004.

Starting point is 00:12:21 as an offshoot of al-Qaeda and then and then formally divorced themselves from al-Qaeda in 2013 because they didn't think al-Qaeda was brutal enough yeah they're counting on weak vulnerable impressionable usually men every now and then you see a woman joining the jihad or joining the movement the struggle and you know sadly we've we've seen it before that certain Americans get sucked into this and for some god-awful reason take action. I'm sure there are many others who are sucked into it to don't take action, but I hope that when they watch the news of this event and see this guy took this to the ultimate extreme and he got killed in the process, they decide, you know what, I better just drop it and move on to something

Starting point is 00:13:15 productive in my life. Look, one of the comments that I will never forget that Guantanamo and other detainees who were Al-Qaeda, Taliban and associated forces would say when they were interrogated lawfully is we have, I'm sorry, you have watches, we have calendars. It means you guys look at the time and you're under the gun because of political pressures to end the war in Afghanistan or end the war in Iraq. We take a very, very long view. It takes 100 years, 500 years, 1,000 years to establish a caliphate. It's worth it. Okay.

Starting point is 00:13:56 And so they take a very different long view than we do. Really critical, I think, to understand that, to understand that mindset. It's so different than the Western world. Very sick. Very sick. Very real. Very real. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:14:10 Does this in your mind? constitute any sort of concerning resurgence of ISIS? Because, you know, for so long, it seemed we really were hearing nothing. And now over the past year, we've started to hear a little bit more about ISIS. Well, I think we can say with some degree of confidence that the precipitous and unwise withdrawal from Afghanistan unleashed a whirlwind. It sent a message of weakness. It emboldens our enemies. I would defend. to people like Rob Greenway or Victoria Coates who can speak more intelligently about the Intel on the national security side of it. My sense in talking to them and reading is that that

Starting point is 00:14:53 did not dissuade ISIS and others from marching forward. You know, it's ironic, too, that here you have this horrific event in New Orleans. The same week that Joe Biden is letting more detainees out of Guantanamo and repatriating him home. I mean, what double message does that send to the enemies of the United States that were re-arming you with your jihadis? And then you have an open border and you know dozens of people who are on the terrorist watch list have been captured crossing the southern border. You also know, and they know because they read, that you have 600,000 people on the non-detained

Starting point is 00:15:40 docket, including 13,000 plus convicted murderers and 15,000 plus convicted sex offenders, they must be high-fiving themselves, laughing at how weak we're coming across and how we're just whittling away our sovereignty. And I'm sure there are none too pleased that the ball game's changing on January 20th because it will change. Yeah. Really critical. Let's take just a moment with the little bit of time we have left collie to talk about what happened in Las Vegas. So, of course, there was a cyber truck there parked outside the Trump Hotel in downtown Las Vegas. It exploded. There were fireworks found in the back. Cancers of gasoline. There have been question marks as to are these two events somehow connected? Both individuals

Starting point is 00:16:28 use the car rental app tourro, sort of like Airbnb for cars in order to purchase these vehicles. They were both in the military. In your assessment, could these acts have been somehow connected, even though there's no indication for the one in Las Vegas that there was any association with a terrorist organization? I'm not there yet. Yeah. Yeah, they were both in the Army. Yeah, they were both at a base in Texas, but there's a lot of big Army bases in Texas and a lot

Starting point is 00:16:54 of training, basic training is in Texas. And so that's like saying, oh, the Navy guys were at Great Lakes. Well, that's where the Naval Training Center is for all Navy enlisted. And, you know, look, this is, this comes across more. as a huge middle finger, pardon my French, to Elon Musk and Donald Trump. You get the biggest, baddest cyber truck, and you park it in front of the Trump International Hotel, and you give the bird to Elon Musk and Trump. Now, whether the guy meant to die, maybe he didn't know the fuse was going to go so quickly. Maybe he did want to die. I don't know. It's sad either way, that somebody

Starting point is 00:17:33 would even go that far. But I'll withhold judgment as to whether or not there's any connection between the two. I mean, I'm not stupid. They happened on the same day or time. You know, they used the same app, et cetera, like that. But I'm not there facts yet. Facts wise yet. Okay. As we continue to watch this unfolds, the next 24 or 48 hours, what will you be watching for? I'll be looking for facts that come out that tell me more about his radicalization path and the planning, because that'll tell us a lot about, you know, how quickly he came to this scheme, the planning, and whether there were other people involved. I mean, the FBI says there are. So if they roll up some other people and they sing or they're not

Starting point is 00:18:24 killed in a shootout and they sing or they lawyer up, then we'll be able to get more information from their social media profile and the wall will start rolling down the hill. But I think we're a long way from getting even a 50% picture of this guy. Well, Collie, thank you for your time. As always, really appreciate your expertise on this. Thanks for having me. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Lewy and Katrina Trinko.

Starting point is 00:18:56 Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Tyler O'Neill, and Elizabeth Mitchell. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, John Pop, and Joseph Von Spockoff. To learn more or support our work, please visit DailySignal.com.

The Daily Signal - Act of Terror: What to Know About FBI Investigation into NOLA Nightmare

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