Deputy Director Christopher Rea
Appearances
Morning Wire
New Years Terror Fallout & U.S. Treasury Hacked | 1.3.25
citizen and army veteran, had an ISIS flag in the truck with him and has a history of making statements about wanting to support the Islamic State. More on that later. A few hours later, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, injuring several bystanders. Authorities have identified the Las Vegas attacker as Matthew Livelsberger. Here's Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMail.
Morning Wire
New Years Terror Fallout & U.S. Treasury Hacked | 1.3.25
Law enforcement are investigating this as a terror attack as well and have determined that the car contained firework-style explosives, fuel, and a detonating device. They've yet to identify Livelsberger's motive. Authorities are stressing that there's no evidence the two attacks are connected, but there are a growing number of parallels between the incidents and their attackers.
Morning Wire
New Years Terror Fallout & U.S. Treasury Hacked | 1.3.25
For instance, both men served in the army. Livelsberger was actually an active duty Green Beret. And they both served at Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg in North Carolina. It doesn't seem like they overlapped at the fort, but they did live in North Carolina at the same time. Finally, both men rented the vehicles used in their attacks on the app Turo.
Morning Wire
New Years Terror Fallout & U.S. Treasury Hacked | 1.3.25
So we'll have to see if any further evidence comes out linking these two together. We should also note that there's some evidence Jabbar had accomplices. The FBI keeps reversing its stance on this.
Morning Wire
New Years Terror Fallout & U.S. Treasury Hacked | 1.3.25
As of this recording, they're saying he acted alone, but initially the Bureau said it was looking into three men and one woman who had been seen planting explosives around Bourbon Street before the attack. The FBI now says it only wanted to talk to those people as witnesses and that Jabbar can be seen on video planting the two IEDs that have been found in New Orleans.
Morning Wire
New Years Terror Fallout & U.S. Treasury Hacked | 1.3.25
Here's Deputy Director of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, Christopher Rea.
Morning Wire
New Years Terror Fallout & U.S. Treasury Hacked | 1.3.25
Yeah, according to the FBI, Jabbar had posted at least five videos on Facebook explaining his motives just before Wednesday's attack. Jabbar said he was inspired to join ISIS by a series of dreams and that he was originally planning to kill his friends and family before deciding to launch the Bourbon Street attack.
Morning Wire
New Years Terror Fallout & U.S. Treasury Hacked | 1.3.25
Jabbar also had a bomb-making station in his home where he left a Quran open to a passage about martyrdom. It's unclear when exactly Jabbar converted to Islam. His brother said, "...as far as I know, he was a Muslim for most of his life."
Morning Wire
New Years Terror Fallout & U.S. Treasury Hacked | 1.3.25
But his first ex-wife's current husband implied that Jabbar converted sometime in the past few months, during which time he was also, quote, "...being all crazy, cutting his hair," and during which time Jabbar's wife had reportedly prevented their daughters from seeing him.
Morning Wire
New Years Terror Fallout & U.S. Treasury Hacked | 1.3.25
Another thing to note, a mosque near Jabbar's home in Texas directed congregants to refer any FBI inquiries to CARE, the controversial Muslim civil rights group with ties to Hamas. We're not sure if Jabbar attended that mosque, but it's certainly notable that it's essentially telling patrons not to cooperate with law enforcement.
Morning Wire
New Years Terror Fallout & U.S. Treasury Hacked | 1.3.25
One final wrinkle, the imam of that mosque has a history of making anti-Semitic comments. He once said that Jews control the world's financial system and praised Hitler for making that same assessment.
Morning Wire
New Years Terror Fallout & U.S. Treasury Hacked | 1.3.25
Yeah, good morning, Georgia. So to quickly recap, we're talking about two separate attacks here, both of which took place on Wednesday. In New Orleans, Shamsuddin Jabbar drove a truck into a crowd of New Year's revelers in the early hours of the morning, killing 14 and injuring at least 35 more. Jabbar, a U.S.