The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Crazy People Are Dangerous: The Fake Seminole Steroid-Using Stripper Bomber

Posted on | October 26, 2018 | 2 Comments

Cesar Sayoc as a North Miami High School senior, 1980.

The arrest today of a 56-year-old Florida man as the suspect in the mail-bomb case was, on the one hand, profoundly disappointing to me, in that I couldn’t believe any Trump supporter would do such a thing. On the other hand, the suspect wasn’t exactly your typical Republican voter:

Although a sticker on Sayoc’s van reads “Native Americans For Trump” and his Twitter feed includes several references to the Seminole Tribe, Seminole spokesman Gary Bitner said there are no records of Sayoc having ever been a member of the tribe.
According to Ancestry.com, Sayoc’s father immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines and was naturalized in 1970 in North Miami Beach.
Public records show that Sayoc had been arrested numerous times in South Florida.
He was arrested in Miami-Dade in 2002 for making a bomb threat against Florida Power and Light, court records show. Sayoc called FPL because he was upset about the amount of his bill. “The defendant then stated that he didn’t deserve it and that he was going to blow up FPL,” according to files released by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.
“FPL will get what they deserve and will be worse than 9/11,” Sayoc said, according to the case notes.
Sayoc also told an FPL employee he “was going to blow her head off,” according to the case file. . . .
Sayoc was also arrested on petty theft charges in Miami-Dade in 1992 and 2014 and sentenced to probation.
Sayoc also had multiple run-ins with the law in Broward County, including for grand theft and battery. Sayoc pleaded no contest to charges of third-degree grand theft and battery on a merchant in 2014, and was arrested in 2004 for possession of a controlled substance without a prescription and with intent to sell. . . .
He was also involved in a domestic violence dispute with a woman named Viola Altieri, who appears to be his grandmother. Altieri filed a civil complaint against Sayoc for domestic violence in 1994. She later filed a request to dismiss the complaint. . . .
While on probation for a felony theft charge in 2014, Sayoc asked the court to let him travel for his job a road manager for “a variety of traveling male revue shows, Chippendales, International Gold Productions, Cesar Palace Royale Burlesque Show, etc.,” according to Broward County court records. A judge granted his request.

Yes, you read that correctly — “traveling male revue shows”:

 

The man suspected of sending mail bombs to prominent Donald Trump critics across the country previously worked as a male stripper. Cesar Sayoc said on his now-deleted LinkedIn page that he worked as a promoter for the Chippendale male stripper organization as a promoter, as well as being a promoter for a burlesque show in the Miami-area. While on his Facebook page, Sayoc said that he was employed by the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Florida. . . .
Speaking to the Washington Examiner, Ohio event promoter Tony Valentine said that Sayoc had previously worked for him. Valentine described Sayoc as a “big muscle head” who “wanted to be a professional wrestler.” Valentine added, “He really couldn’t find his niche in life, and I guess he found it now. Back in the nineties, he was running around from Minnesota to the Carolinas to Florida. He was like a gypsy. He would show up and do an individual act and leave. He was dancing for a guy out in Oklahoma, too.” Valentine said that Sayoc’s career as a stripper was over saying, “He’s like 900 years old now. I wouldn’t hire a 50- or 60-year-old stripper.”
The Chippendales put out a statement denying that Sayoc ever worked for them. TMZ reports that Sayoc actually worked for Gold Productions, a company that has been sued multiple times by the Chippendales for infringement. 

He’s crazy and his mother is a Democrat:

He was mentally disturbed, told his Democrat mom he hated her and likely aggravated his anger with steroid use.
That’s the portrait of Florida bombing suspect Cesar Sayoc painted by lawyer Ronald Lowy, a family friend who represented Sayoc in multiple criminal cases over the years. . . .
“I met with his mother. It’s a very sad situation. She’s obviously very distressed. Her son has been mentally disturbed for a very long time. They’ve encouraged him to get assistance, therapy and treatment, but he’s always refused,” Lowy told the Daily News.
“She’s a Democrat. She finds all of this so shocking and painful. She’s asked me to express her empathy for the victims who had to receive these packages and be in fear. She’s in shock it could have been her son, and if so, she’s deeply regretful,” he said. . . .
Sayoc was also charged in 2004 with felony possession of testosterone-based steroids. Online court records show the case was ultimately dismissed.
“We convinced the state attorney to treat it as they would narcotic. He got in a diversion program to hopefully try to get him off steroids. Sadly, it’s our understanding he went back and continued using them. We think that is probably part of problem. Steroids can create heightened emotions and anger. It’s a very dangerous drug,” Lowy said. . . .
“He’s someone who doesn’t exhibit the sophistication to commit such a sophisticated crime. He’s always shown a diminished capacity in dealing with society, a difficulty conforming or carrying on substantial tasks without supervision,” Lowy said.

The ultimate “Florida Man” — a Filipino-American who pretended to be a Seminole, worked as a male stripper for a fake Chippendales company, used steroids, suffered from mental illness, hated his mother and terrorized the country by sending fake bombs through the mail.

We’re living in Heinlein’s “Crazy Years” . . .

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!



 

 

Category: Crime, Florida, Terrorism

Halloween Edition: Friday Fiction, 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | October 26, 2018 | Comments Off on Halloween Edition: Friday Fiction, 100 Word Challenge

by Smitty

On that fateful Autumn eve
‘Neath a moon so full and bright
Moon maidens would dance and weave
Offering an eldritch sight

That was until Saint Thorgun came
Caught them at their pagan toil
Dared their awful prance to tame
And their magic cloth to coil

For though their wanton wiles were strong
They could not tempt a heart so pure
That was too young to know their wrong
And could long their sorceries endure

But even though his soul was smooth
And walk away in triumph true
Their cloth would his undoing prove
As material things so often do

—
via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction

BREAKING: Suspect in Mail-Bomb Hoax Scare Reportedly Arrested in Florida; UPDATE: Identified as Cesar Sayoc, 56

Posted on | October 26, 2018 | Comments Off on BREAKING: Suspect in Mail-Bomb Hoax Scare Reportedly Arrested in Florida; UPDATE: Identified as Cesar Sayoc, 56

Fox News reports:

A suspect was arrested in Florida on Friday morning in connection with the rash of suspicious packages sent to prominent Democrats nationwide, a law enforcement source confirmed to Fox News.
Federal authorities had been focusing on Florida as the location where the majority of packages originated.
“Some of the packages went through the mail,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told Fox News. “They originated, some of them, from Florida. I am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice.”
Several of the packages went through a U.S. postal facility in Opa-locka, Florida. The Miami-Dade County Police Department confirmed Thursday it was helping federal agents who were at the facility as part of the ongoing investigation. . . .

UPDATE: Rick Leventhal just reported on Fox News that his sources tell him the suspect is a white male in his 50s, a native of New York with a prior history of being arrested for making terroristic threats. The suspect was reportedly arrested in the north Miami suburb of Aventura.

UPDATE II: More from the Miami Herald:

The Miami Herald has learned that the suspect who has been arrested is a man in his 50s from Aventura. He is being questioned by FBI agents with the joint terrorism task force since his arrest this morning at about 10 a.m.
Live shots from a Local 10 news helicopter show federal agents examining a white van covered in a blue tarp.
A law enforcement source tells the Miami Herald the arrest was made at an auto parts store in Plantation. Miami Herald news partner CBS4 reports a “loud explosion” was heard at the time of the arrest, possibly from an FBI flash bomb device.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice confirmed on Twitter one person is in custody and the department plans to hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m.

UPDATE III: TV news showed a white van being towed from the parking lot of the auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, where the suspect was reportedly arrested. Observers say windows of the van were covered in stickers with pro-Trump and other “right-wing” slogans.

UPDATE IV: Multiple sources are now identifying the suspect as Cesar Sayoc Jr., 56, of Aventura, Florida, who is a registered Republican voter.

UPDATE V: A close-up of the suspect’s van (click to enlarge):

 

This photo was taken by a Miami-area resident who says he “saw him at a stoplight one day and thought [it] was very strange.”

UPDATE VI: The British Sun tabloid reports:

Online records show Sayoc has owned companies called Native American Catering & Vending, as well as Proud Native America One Low Price Drycleaning.

Sayoc was also apparently a bodybuilder.

UPDATE VII: From the London Daily Mail:

Cesar Altier Sayoc was taken into custody on Friday morning in Plantation, Florida in connection with the 12 suspicious packages that have been discovered this week.
According to Sayoc’s Facebook page, he is a Trump fan who posted pictures and videos of himself at one of the President’s rallies in October 2016.
He posted a photograph of himself wearing a MAGA hat in front of the US Capitol in 2017.
He is Native American, and according to a picture posted on his social media page, he is a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
In a post a year ago, Sayoc shared a photograph of Governor Rick Scott and Donald Trump, writing: ‘The greatest Governor in Country Fla Rick Scott and great friend of We Unconquered Seminole Tribe . Trump Trump Trump’
He shared bodybuilding pictures and appears to have worked in a strip club.

Fox News reported that federal authorities got a warrant Wednesday to obtain Sayoc’s phone records. So he came under suspicion almost immediately after the first suspicious packages were found.

 

 

Category: Crime, Florida

#FakeNews: NBC Withheld Evidence of Avenatti’s Kavanaugh Deception

Posted on | October 26, 2018 | Comments Off on #FakeNews: NBC Withheld Evidence of Avenatti’s Kavanaugh Deception

 

Thursday, we reported (“Grassley Refers Creepy Porn Lawyer and His Lying Client for FBI Investigation”) that Julie Swetnick and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, are suspected of giving false statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process.

Now, NBC News is admitting that another one of Avenatti’s clients, whose affidavit he provided as corroborating Swetnick’s tales of attending gang-rape parties with Kavanaugh, contradicted those claims:

When Sen. Chuck Grassley referred attorney Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick to the Justice Department for criminal investigation Thursday, he cited Swetnick’s interview with NBC News as evidence the two were trying to mislead the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In the NBC News interview that aired on Oct. 1, Swetnick back-tracked on or contradicted parts of her sworn statement where she alleged she witnessed then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh “cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of boys.”
NBC News also found other apparent inconsistencies in a second sworn statement from another woman whose statement Avenatti provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in a bid to bolster Swetnick’s claims.
In the second statement, the unidentified woman said she witnessed Kavanaugh “spike” the punch at high school parties in order to sexually take advantage of girls. But less than 48 hours before Avenatti released her sworn statement on Twitter, the same woman told NBC News a different story. . . .
The statement also said that Kavanaugh was “overly aggressive and verbally abusive to girls. This conduct included inappropriate physical contact with girls of a sexual nature.”
But reached by phone independently from Avenatti on Oct. 3, the woman said she only “skimmed” the declaration. After reviewing the statement, she wrote in a text on Oct. 4 to NBC News: “It is incorrect that I saw Brett spike the punch. I didn’t see anyone spike the punch…I was very clear with Michael Avenatti from day one.” . . .
In a subsequent text on Oct. 5, she wrote, “I will definitely talk to you again and no longer Avenatti. I do not like that he twisted my words.”

This is enormously significant, as Ashe Schow of the Daily Wire points out: “NBC had all this but didn’t report it at the time, before Kavanaugh’s was confirmed. I wonder why.”

Kavanaugh was confirmed Oct. 6, and NBC News had known since Oct. 4 that the corroborating affidavit supplied by Avenatti was contradicted by the woman who signed it, yet they sat on this evidence — clearly indicating that Avenatti was engaged in deception — for three weeks. NBC thereby became complicit in this deception.

Claiming that a man nominated for the Supreme Court had once engaged in a criminal conspiracy to gang-rape teenage girls is not trivial and if, as now seems probable, Michael Avenatti deliberately created this false narrative, Avenatti has committed a very serious crime. Didn’t NBC News have an obligation to report the evidence it had obtained that indicated Avenatti was engaged in a criminal effort to deceive the Senate?

NBC News promoted Julie Swetnick’s claims against Kavanaugh in an “exclusive” interview five days before the Senate voted. How can they excuse the irresponsibility of giving credibility to Avenatti’s client in this way, and then not following up when they learned that Avenatti’s other client was unwilling to stand by her affidavit? If you want to know why Americans don’t trust the news media, this is it.



 

 

Category: MSNBC, NBC, Senate, Supreme Court

The Russians Did It? Chuck Todd Signals Liberal Media’s Fake-Bomb Panic

Posted on | October 26, 2018 | Comments Off on The Russians Did It? Chuck Todd Signals Liberal Media’s Fake-Bomb Panic

 

The kind of people who watch MSNBC are deeply confused:

NBC’s Chuck Todd said he fears the Russians could be responsible for the mail-bomb scare that has targeted top officials in the Democratic Party, as well as CNN and actor Robert De Niro on Thursday.
“I have this fear that it could be some Russian operation too, in designed to do what’s happening now,” Todd said.
Todd added that we shouldn’t rule out that possibility and that the mail-bomb scare is dividing the country before going to break.
Todd made the comments during a segment on MSNBC’s “Meet The Press Daily,” about how the extreme political rhetoric in American politics has divided the nation, and how it could be responsible for this mail-bomb scare.

Hello? Who is “dividing the country”? Not me. However much “extreme political rhetoric” I might publish — and I guess quoting Democrats qualifies as such — my readers are not divided by it. Responsible adults can read the news and opinions here without being driven to pipe-bomb extremism, although I’m not so sure about the MSNBC audience:

MSNBC’s Ben Collins suggested that person responsible for the mail-bomb scare that has targeted top officials in the Democratic Party, as well as CNN and actor Robert De Niro, probably reads the conservative news website the Drudge Report on Thursday.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle began the segment with Collins by highlighting an image of the device sent to former CIA Director John Brennan. On the device, there appears to be an image of a parody ISIS flag that has been circulating on the internet since 2014 as a meme. . . .
Collins noted that the image basically appears to be an ISIS flag. “But instead of the Arabic script, there’s like fake naked ladies on there, and it says ‘get ‘er done’ on it,” he said.
“What does that mean?” Ruhle asked.
“It’s a Larry the Cable Guy joke. It’s like, not that sophisticated. This is not a smart thing, it’s a troll is what this is,” Collins responded. “It’s meant to sort of symbolize that he’s on one [political] side. This is from a conservative meme parody website from 2014.”
Collins added that this is a very obscure meme that didn’t get a lot of traction.
Ruhle asked Collins about the group that created the meme and what they represent.
“It’s just some guy really. It’s a guy in Scottsdale, Arizona who made a meme in 2014. It’s been around conservative web forums, not like young people [forums],” Collins said. “I’m talking like people who follow the Drudge Report and Fox News and stuff like that. It’s that sort of circle.”

The Drudge Report is the world’s most popular Internet news site. Everybody in the news business — whatever their politics — reads Drudge. How many times a day does Chuck Todd check Drudge?

Meanwhile, a nationwide law-enforcement task force is on the job:

“We are investigating all this with great precision. I can say with certainty that we will identify and arrest the person or people responsible for these acts,” New York police Commissioner James O’Neill said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. “Law enforcement professionals do not care about the politics involved in these acts.”
Bill Sweeney of the FBI’s New York office said an army of agents is “fully engaged” in the probe.
“This is a nationwide investigation involving multiple jurisdictions coast to coast,” Sweeney said.

What worries the liberal media is the possibility that this bomb hoax (none of the “suspicious packages” exploded, a telltale clue) will turn out to be a “false flag” operation, perpetrated by a left-wing kook who deliberately targeted Democrats in an attempt to cast suspicion on Republicans. If this is the case, and the perpetrator is apprehended soon, it could be very damaging for Democrats in the midterms.

Roger Simon lays out the common-sense questions:

Even if Brennan was misspelled, Occam’s Razor is beginning to spell “HOAX”  correctly.  But by and for whom?  Here as well we don’t know, but again followers of William of Ockham would tend to point you toward the left wing — a single leftie nutcase or some Antifa types, perhaps. After all, cui bono? With Kavanaugh and the caravan, things were not looking good for the Democrats. The subject had to be changed before it was too late and the blue wave turned red. So far, however, it’s not working. No wonder the reliably left-leaning Chuck Todd is suddenly pointing toward Russia, not some MAGA-hatted redneck with a Confederate flag tattooed on his chest, as the perpetrator. It’s a dead giveaway.  He’s probably hoping for the Russians now.  Because if it goes as it’s currently looking, it’s bad news for his team.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) By the way, we don’t know that the bomb hoaxer has any political motive. Remember that police theorized the Speedway bomber was attempting to divert police attention from their investigation of the murder of Julia Scyphers. Solving a case like this might take months, but advances in forensic science — and the reality of ubiquitous video surveillance — could lead to an arrest soon.

Steve Nelson at the Washington Examiner talked to retired FBI agents, who cautioned against jumping to conclusions, and pointed to one recent high-profile case where the motive was not what it seemed:

There are some notable recent examples of terroristic threats triggering inaccurate public conclusions. Last year, Jewish Community Centers in the U.S. received hundreds of threatening phone calls, creating significant public concern about rising anti-Semitism. Authorities in Israel determined a local teenager was responsible.

In that case, the motive was boredom:

When asked to explain his actions, the teenager told psychiatrists that he made the threats to avoid being bored.
“I did it out of boredom; it was like a game. I understand that it is forbidden. I am sorry, I won’t do it again,” he said.

If bored teenagers are a terrorist threat, we’re all doomed.

UPDATE: Fred Burton, chief security officer of the private intelligence firm Stratfor, appeared on Fox News yesterday and said he believes law enforcement will identify the suspect soon:

Bill Hemmer: Why do you think they’ll have this case cracked by the end of the day?
Fred Burton: I think as a former federal agent who has looked into cases like this we never had the resources in my day to deal with a problem like this. Now the entire system is geared to find people just like this. I think that now they have CCTV footage of the suspect. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not watching somebody perhaps like we saw unfold in the Austin bomber. They’re just putting the pieces of the case together.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)

UPDATE II: BREAKING: Suspect in Mail-Bomb Hoax Scare Reportedly Arrested in Florida.



 

 

Category: Crime, Election, MSNBC, Terrorism

Grassley Refers Creepy Porn Lawyer and His Lying Client for FBI Investigation

Posted on | October 25, 2018 | Comments Off on Grassley Refers Creepy Porn Lawyer and His Lying Client for FBI Investigation

Don’t mess with Chuck Grassley:

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley on Thursday referred Julie Swetnick and her lawyer Michael Avenatti to the Department of Justice for a possible criminal investigation over allegations they made false statements to Congress about now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“I am writing to refer Mr. Michael Avenatti and Ms. Julie Swetnick for investigation,” Grassley wrote in a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, for potential “materially false statements they made to the Committee during the course of the Committee’s investigation. ”
In a statement, Grassley said, “When a well-meaning citizen comes forward with information relevant to the committee’s work, I take it seriously. It takes courage to come forward, especially with allegations of sexual misconduct or personal trauma. I’m grateful for those who find that courage.”
Grassley continued, “But in the heat of partisan moments, some do try to knowingly mislead the committee. That’s unfair to my colleagues, the nominees and others providing information who are seeking the truth.” . . .
Grassley said that Swetnick had contradicted her own allegations in an interview with NBC, and that the committee spoke with “45 individuals, obtained 25 written statements and reviewed numerous other materials” but could not find “any information to corroborate Ms. Swetnick’s claims.”
“I ask that the FBI investigate whether Mr. Avenatti criminally conspired with Ms. Swetnick to make materially false statements to the Committee,” Grassley wrote.

Meanwhile, Democrats are ready to throw Avenatti under their bus:

Michael Avenatti, the lawyer and possible presidential candidate, caused a stir with his contention that there’s only one type of candidate who can beat President Trump. In an interview with TIME published Thursday, Avenatti said the Democrats’ 2020 nominee “better be a white male,” because society affords more credibility to white men than it does others. . . .
As a potential candidate, Avenatti is seeking to create an image as a product of the American heartland. “That’s why I’m very dangerous to this president — that’s exactly why the last thing in the world this guy wants is to run against somebody like me,” he told TIME. “Because I can talk to those people, and whoever the Democratic nominee is better be able to talk to those people.”

This guy has overstayed his 15 minute minutes of fame, which might end with his being sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.

 

 

Category: Democrats

Deported Immigrant Sex Offender Caught by Border Patrol in Texas

Posted on | October 25, 2018 | Comments Off on Deported Immigrant Sex Offender Caught by Border Patrol in Texas

 

Guarantee you won’t see this story reported on CNN:

U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned to the Eagle Pass Station arrested a convicted sex offender in Eagle Pass, Monday.
“Our agents are tasked with preserving our way of life and ensuring the integrity of our borders and the security of our communities,” said Del Rio Sector Acting Chief Patrol Agent Matthew J. Hudak. “Thanks to their hard work, another convicted felon, was prevented from entering the U.S. and is unable to do more harm.”
On Oct. 22, Eagle Pass agents arrested Mexican national Efren Arellano-Arreola, 35, after he illegally entered the United States. Records checks revealed he has a criminal history, including a conviction in February 2016 for Sexual Assault of a Child, in Dallas County. Arellano-Arreola was sentenced to serve five years in prison for that offense, and is registered as a sex-offender. Further checks also show that he was removed from the United States in January 2018.
As a convicted felon who has been previously removed from the United States, Arellano-Arreola faces a charge of 8 USC § 1326 — re-entry after deportation, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Bob Price reports at Breitbart:

A search of Dallas County court records by Breitbart News revealed that Arellano-Arreola confessed in open court to sexually penetrating the mouth of a girl under the age of 17 with his penis. Following his confession, the judge of the 203rd District Court sentenced him to spend five years in a Texas penitentiary. He would serve less than two years in state prison before being deported by immigration officers.

To quote President Trump, “they’re not sending their best.”

 

 

Category: Immigration, Mexico, Texas, Violence Against Women

Bomb Hoaxes Achieve Goal of Inspiring Unsubstantiated Political Speculation

Posted on | October 25, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

Let’s start with the official FBI statement:

Between October 22 and 24, 2018, suspicious packages were received at multiple locations in the New York and Washington, D.C., areas and Florida. The packages are being sent for analysis at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.
“This investigation is of the highest priority for the FBI. We have committed the full strength of the FBI’s resources and, together with our partners on our Joint Terrorism Task Forces, we will continue to work to identify and arrest whoever is responsible for sending these packages,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “We ask anyone who may have information to contact the FBI. Do not hesitate to call; no piece of information is too small to help us in this investigation.”
The packages are similar in appearance . . . and contain potentially destructive devices.
The packages were mailed in manila envelopes with bubble wrap interior. The packages were affixed with computer-printed address labels and six Forever stamps. All packages had a return address of “DEBBIE WASSERMAN SHULTZ” [sic] in Florida. Packages identified to date were addressed to:

George Soros
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Former President Barack Obama
Former CIA Director John Brennan, care of CNN
Former Attorney General Eric Holder

The package addressed to former Attorney General Holder did not reach its intended destination, but was rerouted to the return address in Florida.
The FBI will continue to work with our federal law enforcement partners at the United States Secret Service, United States Postal Inspection Service, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as our state and local law enforcement partners, to identify and arrest the person or people responsible for sending these packages.
It is possible that additional packages were mailed to other locations. The FBI advises the public to remain vigilant and not touch, move or handle any suspicious or unknown packages.
If you have information about these packages, please contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or tips.fbi.gov. If you observe any suspicious activity that requires an immediate response, please call 911 or contact your local law enforcement.

Speculation ran wild that this was done by either (a) a right-wing kook inspired by President Trump’s rhetoric or (b) a left-wing kook trying to make right-wingers look guilty. There is abundant reason to believe (b), although we don’t know. My expectation is that the FBI will have a suspect in custody by Monday. They won’t get away with this, and they probably did it knowing full well they would get caught.

These were not actual bombs. There were no explosions. These “potentially destructive devices” were constructed to look dangerous, but obviously the person sending them did not want to kill their targets. This is in itself evidence of motive, pointing toward (b) and not (a).

As soon as these bomb scares made news Wednesday, conservatives on Twitter suggested it was (b), known as the “false flag” theory, and were immediately denounced by liberals for suggesting this. However, common sense is not paranoia, and there are lots of common sense reasons to lean toward the “false flag” theory of this crime:

  1. The hoaxer would have to be phenomenally stupid to imagine they could escape apprehension. In the age of video surveillance and advanced forensics, you can’t send bombs (or fake bomb-looking devices) to high-profile political targets and evade the Joint Terrorism Task Force. No, you’re going to be in handcuffs within 72 hours, I’d guess, and so we must ask: Who is stupid enough not to understand this?
  2. The return addresses misspelled the surname of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and the package delivered to CNN misspelled the surname of John Brennan. If you hate these people so much that you’d want to kill them with bombs, wouldn’t you bother learning how to spell their names? Again, this looks like evidence of stupidity.
  3. Republicans are winning. Every political analyst is now saying that the GOP is almost certain to retain control of the Senate, and may even be able to turn back the Democrat “blue wave” in the House. Political terrorism is usually committed by losers, and since the Kavanaugh hearings, Republicans have been looking like winners, so why would a right-winger want to screw up that winning streak by sending bombs?

A non-lethal threat to big-name Democrats, perpetrated by someone so stupid they think they can escape a federal terrorism task force? Well, I can’t rule out that a right-wing dimwit committed this hoax — anything is possible — but it sure as heck reminds me of the fake “hate crime” hoaxes that plague university campuses every spring. This has become a predictable annual ritual. A racial slur or homophobic epithet is scrawled in a dorm hallway or whatever and, a couple weeks later, a liberal student is arrested for making a false police report:

Following President Trump’s election and inauguration, several universities have seen an increase in such reports.
One student at the University of Michigan faked an attack because of what she called a post-election “surge in hate crimes.” The UM student was fined $660 and is on a suspended 93-day jail sentence, pending probation adherence, for falsely reporting a hate crime. She admitted to having mental health issues when she pleaded guilty, but at the time, she told police she was targeted for wearing a solidarity pin.
She later admitted to scratching herself with her solidarity pin after becoming upset during a woman’s literature class at the University of Michigan, according to the Ann Arbor Police Department report. . . .
A note that used the N-word and threatened a black female student at St. Olaf College inspired a student-led protest against institutional racism at the school and the cancellation of classes.
Only problem? It “was not a genuine threat,” according to the school’s president. The author of the note confessed to fabricating it “to draw attention to concerns about the campus climate.”

Michelle Malkin has spent years chronicling campus hate hoaxes, and anyone who has paid attention to this phenomenon for the past 15 years or so must be skeptical of anything resembling this familiar pattern.

Wednesday, I sat here at my desk working while the TV in my home office was blaring out news about this bomb scare, and for several hours, I avoided the temptation to comment, while speculation ran wild on social media. We don’t know what we don’t know, and it’s foolish to rush into these things claiming to know something when you don’t. Better to wait for the FBI to arrest the suspect and then let the chips fall where they may. But this didn’t stop Democrats from blaming you-know-who:

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” former Clinton aide Philippe Reines commented on the devices sent to various political and media figures and stated that “you have to ask how much Donald Trump is responsible for the climate that we’re in where things like this happen.”
Reines said, “These are very lucky people, in that the former first families have Secret Service protection with such robust protocols. But if you look at who they’ve targeted so far, it’s almost like they’re following Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. . . . I think you have to ask how much Donald Trump is responsible for the climate that we’re in where things like this happen.”

If Clinton aides can rush to blame Trump without any evidence whatsoever, the floor is open to speculation, and Wednesday night, I called my brother Kirby to talk theories. He’s pretty good at this stuff, and he made two very insightful suggestions I’ll share here:

  1. It was the Kavanaugh confirmation that inspired the bomb-hoaxer, so about three weeks went into the preparation of this hoax.
  2. If this is a left-winger trying to frame Trump supporters, the perpetrator probably scrubbed their social-media profiles recently, to remove evidence of their political affiliation. They may even have fabricated a phony right-wing online presence, so that when they’re apprehended, the media will find a bunch of pro-Trump messages on their Facebook page, etc.

Whatever the facts may be, the sooner the perpetrator is in custody, the better for everyone. Facts are always better than speculation.



 

 

Category: Crime, Terrorism
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