“Gilroy, a former Fort Pierce police officer, said Mateen frequently made homophobic and racial comments. Gilroy said he complained to his employer several times but it did nothing because he was Muslim.”
Omar Mateen – who as we reported earlier was licensed as a security guard and also holds a firearms license – was employed by the US subsidiary of G4S plc, a British multinational security services company, whose US-headquarters are located in Jupiter, Fla, and which also happens to be the world’s largest security company by revenue….
But where it gets more disturbing is that as Judicial Watch reported several days ago, in a post titled, “DHS Quietly Moving, Releasing Vanloads Of Illegal Aliens Away From Border”, border patrol sources said that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was quietly transporting illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix and releasing them without proper processing or issuing court appearance documents. As a reminder, the government classifies them as Other Than Mexican (OTM) and this week around 35 were transferred 116 miles north from Tucson to a Phoenix bus station where they went their separate way. Judicial Watch was present when one of the white vans carrying a group of OTMs arrived at the Phoenix Greyhound station on Buckeye Road.
And this is where the Mateen-G4S link emerges: as JW reported previously, a security company contracted by the U.S. government is driving the OTMs from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector where they were in custody to Phoenix, sources said. The firm is the abovementioned G4S, the world’s leading security solutions group with operations in more than 100 countries and 610,000 employees. G4S has more than 50,000 employees in the U.S. and its domestic headquarters is in Jupiter, Florida.
Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, hosted a “shoestring” talk show in which he regularly unleashed anti-U.S. tirades and once praised the Taliban.
The timeline of the shooting shows, at the very least, massive misjudgment on the part of the police. The shooting started at 2:02 AM, but police don’t call in the SWAT team until 3 AM? And it’s another two hours before they storm the club? And all this after the shooter had called 911 to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State?
Reddit’s main news group evidently decided to censor mentions of the shooting once it became known that the shooter was a radical Muslim. They even censored posts providing information on blood donations.
For years, too many Americans – including the lion’s share of our elite media and most of our politicians — have been content to deny the obvious, namely that quite a few Muslims espouse beliefs that are deeply at odds with what the vast majority of Americans believe. Some of those Muslims openly advocate violence and, if they are otherwise maladjusted, the odds they may murder in the name of Islam increase commensurately. We need to have a robust national debate on this important issue. Donald Trump has opened the door to that discussion, in his customary brusque, ham-handed way. More tact is required, but we cannot put off talking about radical Islam and jihadism any longer.
After the Bataclan massacre last autumn, the French government in effect went to war with radical Islam, pledging a “merciless” response to terrorism. This wasn’t just talk. Mass arrests of suspected radicals followed, dealing a serious blow to ISIS networks in the country. Paris meant business, finally.
In the aftermath of our own Bataclan, President Obama has offered his usual platitudes about “hate” and “guns.” This is escapism-as-counterterrorism-policy. Americans must demand better, including a reality-based assessment of our terrorism threat, from our next commander-in-chief. If we cannot name our enemy, we are already halfway to losing the war.
Milo Yiannopoulos weighs in: “The Christian Right may not be totally down with homos, and Trump may say things that hurt our delicate feelings, but they aren’t going to kill us or put us in camps. Only Islam would do that — the same Islam that, bizarrely, now stands at the top of the left’s hierarchy of victimhood.”
The gunman who opened fire at a gay Florida nightclub early Sunday, shooting over 100 people, had called 911 moments before to pledge allegiance to the leader of ISIS, law enforcement sources told NBC News.
But as investigators try to determine if extremism motivated Omar Mateen, 29, to attack the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, his family believes he was pushed over the edge by pure hate against the LGBT community.
Various law enforcement officials have identified the shooter as Mateen, who was born in New York and lived in Port St. Lucie on Florida’s eastern shores.
The attack, which claimed at least 50 lives, is considered the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. While authorities are still investigating what motivated the gunman, the shooting is being considered an act of terrorism.
Well, this video from April would seem to be newly relevant in light of Omar Mateen’s mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, wouldn’t it?
Authorities in Orlando said that 50 people were killed in what authorities are calling an act of domestic terrorism, and many others were injured in the violence at Pulse, a popular gay bar and dance club. Police had initially thought about 20 people were killed in the attack, but authorities said later on Sunday morning that the toll was significantly higher.
The body count evidently includes the shooter.
The suspected gunman was identified by relatives and law enforcement officials as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old from Fort Pierce, Fla. One relative said that Mateen’s family was in shock after being told on Sunday morning about his involvement. This relative said Mateen’s family was very sorry about what had happened.
Police have not identified a possible motive, and details about Mateen’s background were scarce on Sunday morning. His family is from Afghanistan, while Mateen is believed to have been born in the United States.
So a man named Omar with roots in Afghanistan opens fire in a gay nightclub. What could his motivations possibly be? It’s an insoluble mystery!
The CBS News article, in contrast to the Washington Post, is not nearly so reticent about the shooter’s motives:
A U.S. intelligence source told CBS news senior investigative producer Pat Milton that Islamic terrorism is being investigated as a possible motive in the shooting due to several indicators including the style of the attack, which had similarities to the attacks in Paris in November 2015 and Brussels in March. The gunman put up a protracted gun battle with police and was heavily armed, the source said.
Also this: “FBI Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Ron Hopper said at a press conference that there are ‘some suggestions’ the gunman ‘may have leanings’ toward Jihadist ideology.”
And TMZ, who was evidently willing to spare a staff member from their dedicated Kardashian team, states bluntly “Omar Mateen Terrorist was 29-Year-Old Islamic Radical.”
Williamson County business leaders stood outside the county courthouse Wednesday morning to deliver an ultimatum to District Attorney Jana Duty: resign or be forced out.
“I, along with other community leaders, demand that Jana Duty step down and resign her position as district attorney of Williamson County by sunset this Friday,” said Jim Schwertner, owner of Schwertner Farms, a cattle trading enterprise.
“If she does not, we will petition the court to have her removed as district attorney of Williamson County,” he said.
If Schwertner’s name sounds familiar, it may be because he’s a distant cousin to state senator Dr. Charles Schwertner of Georgetown.
Another official who has called for her to resign is Georgetown Mayor Dale Ross. “We still have seven months to go and we need the judiciary to be operating at 100 percent capacity, and from what we understand that’s not the case these days.”
Duty continues to insist she’ll serve out her term.
The mechanisms by which a county official (including a district attorney) may be removed from office are outlined here, which defines “official misconduct” as “intentional, unlawful behavior relating to official duties by an officer entrusted with the administration of justice or the execution of the law. The term includes an intentional or corrupt failure, refusal, or neglect of an officer to perform a duty imposed on the officer by law.”
Dwight beat me to this story on Williamson County District Attorney Jana Duty being placed on probation for 18 months by the Texas bar, but I have a few additional bits of context for those coming in late on the Jana Duty Saga.
First, let’s remember how widely unpopular Duty was (and is) with fellow Williamson County Republicans. Holly Hansen had this to say back in 2011:
Republican Jana Duty was first elected to the office in 2004 and re-elected in 2008, but has developed increasingly antagonistic interactions with the County Judge, all four members of the Commissioners Court, all of the County Court at Law Judges, the Williamson County District Attorney, and pretty much any other judge handing an down unfavorable ruling.
Since then, if anything she’s managed to become even less popular.
Second, the fact that Duty was sanctioned for “withholding evidence in a murder case” provides a delicious bit of irony for those who have been following her career. For it was charges of “prosecutorial misconduct” in the Michael Morton case that allowed her to defeat incumbent John Bradley in the 2012 Republican primary, even though Bradley was only involved in Morton’s appeal process, not the original prosecution. The Morton case was a real miscarriage of justice, but Duty and several other dubiously-conservative challengers in 2012 seemed to view the case as a “get into office free” card.
Finally, one tiny tidbit missing from the Statesman article Dwight linked to: Shawn Dick beat Duty in this year’s Republican Primary, so that probation is going to extend through the end of her term as DA, and beyond…
Has there ever been such a prohibitive favorite who still managed to win do it in a less-convincing fashion? Hillary 2016 combines the excitement of Mondale 1984 with the outsider enthusiasm of Humphrey 1968 and the sincerity of Edwards 2008.
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is vowing to take the fight to the convention, though it’s hard to see how he wins the nomination at this point short of an FBI indictment or a incapacitating health event on the part of Clinton.
Here we are, the final day of the primary season, when Democrats in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota go to the polls to (theoretically) put Hillary Clinton over the top.
Why did Hillary want to hide her communications from the public so badly? “The most frightening explanation is that she sold foreign policy favors to the highest bidders to the Clinton Foundation and/or her husband. Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, argues that we can’t understand the “server” story unless we look carefully at the Clinton Foundation. In his opinion, some of Hillary’s policy decisions were linked to contributions to the Clinton Foundation.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The Debate between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump is on no off, no on, no off no…let me get back to you.
Inside David French’s non-run for President. Which is indeed off, if you hadn’t heard.
“Hillary Clinton wore $12,495 Armani jacket during speech on inequality.” Of course, the amazing thing about Hillary is her ability to pick a $12,495 Armani jacket that still makes her look like a frumpy restaurant cashier… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)