☕️ DOMESTIC ☙ Thursday, January 2, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

The New Year begins with twin domestic terror attacks and a strange new respect for transparency at the FBI. Was yesterday a signal for a national terror tsunami?

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! As you surely must be aware, there were two weirdly connected domestic terror attacks yesterday. Today’s quick-hitting roundup collects what we do know and attempts to sift through the hot takes noise. Does this mean a national wave of pre-Inauguration terrorism is headed our way?

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2025 began tragically and violently, with a bang, as it were, after twin New Year’s terror attacks. The first occurred around 3am Wednesday morning, less than twenty days from the Inauguration. Fifteen defenseless Bourbon Street New Year’s Eve revelers were killed, and dozens more seriously injured, when a cowardly domestic jihadist and disgraced US Army veteran drove his white pickup through the crowd at high speed. As usual, the attack raised more questions than provided answers. Fortunately, our nation’s top law enforcement officers are on the case: N.O.P.D.’s Police Captain, Grandma Memaw, 96, and F.B.I. Special Agent in Charge, Ms. Woke DEI Hire, 22:

I. Just. Can’t. Even.

So don’t worry. These ladies will surely get to the bottom of things tout de suite. (But don’t call them Shirley.)

In an uncommonly quick statement from Camp David, Biden mumbled that the FBI had told him that, “mere hours before the attack,” the driver posted videos to his Facebook account addressed to his family, explaining that the Islamic State had inspired him to kill. In other words, on the way to the attack he disclosed his ISIS connections for the first time to his own family.

Biden also described the killer in great detail, almost savoring the details: “an American citizen, born in Texas, who served in the US Army on active duty for many years, he also served in the Army reserve until a few years ago.”

The FBI’s nose-ringed Agent In Charge, Ms. Woke D. Hire, first told reporters unequivocally that it was not a terror attack, right before Captain Memaw croaked that it was a terror attack. Well, in her defense, it seems like English may not be Ms. Woke Hire’s first language. In any case, the FBI is now singing from the same page of music.

Later yesterday, FBI Agent Woke D. Hire even floated a theory of domestic terror conspiracy:

Officials provided even more detail, including describing an improvised explosive device found in the car, inside a cooler filled with nails. They reported finding two more cooler-bombs placed “nearby” on Bourbon Street. And, get this, officials already reported having surveillance footage that shows at least three men and one woman planting possible explosives at various locations throughout the French Quarter before the deranged truck attack.

It was the first time in recorded memory that the FBI identified, confirmed, and described a mass killer within twelve hours of the attack. It might be the only time the FBI ever speculated about a possible broader conspiracy within the first day, never mind describing in real time what they saw on incoming security footage. Weird. But if it’s a new trend of transparency, it’s welcome.

Also weird is the hint of a conspiracy. The FBI historically has been, well, reluctant to find co-conspirators for these types of attacks. Remember, the FBI never found anyone else involved in: the Las Vegas shooting, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Centennial Park Bombing (also a US Army veteran) the Matthew Crooks assassination attempt, or the Ryan Routh assassination attempt, just to name a few.

Not only was it a domestic terror attack, but it was a domestic Islamist terror attack, and to make sure that fact was perfectly clear, the killer Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, spent the time to mount an ISIS flag on the back of the rented pickup he used in the attack. After he crashed the truck, he got into a shootout with police and was killed on the scene, so don’t expect him to ever explain anything.

Two brave N.O.P.D. officers were wounded taking out Jabbar.

Bourbon Street normally has security barriers installed in the streets that can be raised or lowered for oversized-crowd events like the one attended Tuesday night by the annual New Year’s Eve / Sugar Bowl revelers. But this year, the security barriers had been removed, not for repair, but to be replaced — in February.

I know what you’re thinking, but they didn’t just leave security to chance. Captain Memaw said she’d worked up a detailed plan to defend Bourbon Street using police cars in place of the removed security barriers. Unfortunately, as Captain Memaw admitted, the “terrorist defeated it,” meaning her brilliant plan.

Specifically, Jabber defeated Captain Memaw’s detailed plan to defend Bourbon Street by driving around the police cars on the open sidewalk.

When reporters pressed Captain Memaw for the details of her security plan, and why officials were seemingly caught with their slacks down by someone driving past them on the sidewalk, Governor Jeff Landry suddenly grabbed the microphone, obliquely pledging that officials would “be transparent” and would address “defects in this system.”

Defects?

“We’re going to fix it,” Landry vowed to reporters, as though the most pressing question on everyone’s mind was whether police would bother changing anything for next time.

🚀 Nothing in Jabbar’s history so far supports the videos the FBI claims to have found, where Jabber says Islam inspired his attack. He served in the US Army as a computer specialist and had no special explosives training. He spent a year in Afghanistan but was discharged from the service in 2015 after driving drunk on base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He owned and operated a small real estate company in Houston until 2023, when his broker’s license expired.

Nothing to that date suggests Jabbar had been radicalized in any way.

The Washington Post reported that Grant Savoy, one of Jabbar’s former high school classmates in Texas, was shocked to hear about the attack, saying Jabbar had been “a regular dude” and “a quiet guy” back in the day.

Jabbar lived with his wife in a quiet Houston suburb, where he grew up. The couple had two daughters aged 14 and 20. He rented the truck he used in the attack using a car-sharing app called Turo. This app, Turo, links Jabbar with the second attack yesterday in Las Vegas.

🚀 Let’s assume that, for no apparent reason, the Army veteran and real estate agent Jabbar decided to become a domestic terrorist for, of all organizations, deep-state affiliated ISIS. Why drive five hours from Houston to New Orleans to conduct the attack, when many soft targets were much closer to home? Why are the FBI and even President Cabbage gushing with information, even offering speculative guesses, and not hiding behind the ubiquitous “ongoing investigation?”

After all, they still aren’t talking about failed Trump assassin Ryan Wesley Routh, since that one is an ‘ongoing investigation.’

Well, we will know more after they catch the co-conspirators who helped plant the IEDs in the French Quarter. Assuming, that is, they are ever caught. We’ll see.

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Yesterday’s second attack was described in a New York Times article with the grotesquely deceptive headline, “Cybertruck Explosion Outside Trump Hotel in Las Vegas Leaves 1 Dead and Several Injured.” First of all, the headline makes it sound like the Tesla Cybertruck blew up due to a mechanical defect instead of a bomb. Second, the “one dead” was the apparent bomber. Seven people near the scene sustained minor injuries.

The useless story ran at the Times’ top-of-fold this morning. You could read the article and think it was an accidental, spontaneous electric battery fire. The Washington Post’s article was better, at least explaining in the sub-headline that, “The FBI said it is working to determine whether the explosion of the Tesla Cybertruck, which was filled with large firework mortars and gas canisters, was an act of terrorism.”

In other words, it was another domestic terrorist attack, the second on the same day, and was possibly the first suicide bombing in American history.

Or, maybe the bomber innocently drove the Elon Musk-affiliated Cybertruck up to the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas packed with gas canisters and large fireworks mortars because he planned a big New Year’s Eve show but then the battery very inconveniently caught on fire, and chaos ensued.

The problem with that hypothesis is all the apparent links between Las Vegas and the New Orleans attack.

First, the driver, who was instantly and quite painfully burned alive in the raging fire after the Tesla exploded, was identified as another US Army serviceman, this one on active duty, a Green Beret veteran and lifelong Colorado Springs resident, Matthew Livelsberger, 37. Matt and the New Orleans truck terrorist Jabbar both served at Fort Bragg, possibly at the same time (though that has yet to be confirmed). Both men served in Afghanistan.

And perhaps most coincidentally, both men rented their attack vehicles using the same car-sharing app, Turo.

Social media investigators have pointed out, and it’s a fair point, that nobody ever saw Livelsberger alive before the Cybertruck blew up. It detonated before he could get out, as soon as the car reached the curb in front of Trump’s hotel. In theory, a Tesla Cybertruck could be operated by remote control, although that isn’t a standard feature. So, again in theory, Livelsberger could have been dead before the vehicle arrived. There’s no evidence to support this theory, and there never will be.

Well, maybe that’s not quite right. Matt’s special forces and military intelligence background ensured he could have planned a much more sophisticated attack than this botched bombing, an amateur effort that went nowhere, not least of all because of the Cybertruck’s durable stainless steel construction, which appears to have contained much of the force of the explosion and limited the worst damage to its occupant.

The Trump-Musk connection —Tesla Cybertruck bombing a Trump Hotel— seems overtly politicized, a deliberate statement for this precise political moment. Like failed Trump assassin Ryan Routh, apparently Matt Livelsberger was involved in helping staff Ukraine with foreign mercenaries. This was allegedly copied from Matt’s LinkedIn account, before it was taken down:

While not yet confirmed in any mainstream media platform, Livelsberger and his wife Sarah (or ex-wife, it’s not yet clear) have social media footprints suggesting they were left-leaning and quite Trump-deranged. Since that describes 20% of the native population, it’s nowhere near sufficient explanation for why Matt Livelsberger would throw his life away to become the country’s first domestic suicide bomber.

Nor is there, so far, any ISIS connection, or even a hint of any terror group involvement. What Green Beret Matt Livelsberger thought he would accomplish by blowing up a Cybertruck outside Trump International Hotel is anybody’s guess. Another mystery motive.

🚀 We remain in the hot-takes phase. Understandably, jittery social media was abuzz this morning with speculation over various worst-case, apocalyptic scenarios, such as wider-scale attacks throughout the country. That possibility remains highly speculative and is probably the least likely scenario, not least of all because the attackers were native Americans and not imported, border-jumping terrorists.

The other social media trend was speculation over the obvious links between the two attacks, the FBI’s strange new transparency, and what kind of “false flag” it could be this time.

Cui bono? Since both attacks were by domestic terrorists, the FBI arguably looks more justified for focusing so hard on domestic terrorism over the last four years. Of course, they wasted time investigating stay-at-home moms who complained to school boards, but they completely missed looking at Democrats serving in the Armed Forces as suspects, and failed to prevent either of yesterday’s attacks.

Along the same lines, with both attackers being Americans, you could argue the attacks politically undermined Trump’s mass deportation plans, since it was locals and not illegal migrants who caused so much carnage yesterday.

But those speculations are hot takes, since we are still learning the basic facts, and theories will surely evolve dramatically over the coming days. We’ll see. In the meantime, we pray for peace and justice for the families of those killed, and for the complete and quick healing of those who were injured.

We’ll feel a lot better in nineteen or so days. It is fair to say that 2025 has started with a bang.

Have a terrific Thursday! The Childers clan returns home today, so you can expect a traditional C&C roundup tomorrow morning. Thanks for your patience during our holiday vacay.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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