As the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting has continued to play out, one question seems to keep coming back to the national conscience. Why?
Why did Stephen Paddock carry out this evil attack?
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Thus far there has been no firm response to the all-important “why” question, but there is one possibility that the media seems averse to discussing. That possibility is that Paddock had been radicalized.
Almost immediately after the attack the villains at ISIS claimed responsibility and argued that Paddock was a recent convert to their cause.
Just pasted to Nashir News Telegram channels: English version of Islamic State's official statement re the #LasVegas attack pic.twitter.com/kShI2YvdJW
— Michael S. Smith II (@MichaelSSmithII) October 2, 2017
The media has mostly ignored or called false the idea that Paddock was a soldier of ISIS, but if it is a lie, it’s the first time that ISIS has claimed responsibility for an attack in the West that they didn’t carry out.
On Monday, Amaq, the propaganda news agency for ISIS, called Paddock a “soldier of the caliphate” and later published a more formal claim. But terrorism experts say this is likely ISIS’s first false claim for an attack in the West. If it’s not, Paddock represents a wild outlier among those who have committed violence in the name of ISIS…
1. After ISIS claimed Vegas, I was waiting for them to release Naba, their weekly newsletter, to see if anything new emerged. Naba is out: pic.twitter.com/yX8AN3OdSX
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) October 5, 2017
2. Under a picture of the Mandalay Bay drenched in blood they rehash the attack. New info: They are now claiming shooter converted 6 mos ago pic.twitter.com/2t53MSBNHq
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) October 5, 2017
3. Below is the @siteintelgroup translation. ISIS earlier said shooter converted "months ago." Now they're saying it was 6 mos specifically pic.twitter.com/Lo6hF1S65M
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) October 5, 2017
4. No proof is provided, but ISIS has rarely claimed attacks that were not by either their members or sympathizers.
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) October 5, 2017
5. ISIS members meanwhile are pointing out that after ISIS downed Metrojet over Sinai, no one believed them: pic.twitter.com/8oF4skW8VK
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) October 5, 2017
6. In their chatrooms, they are claiming that the West and the media is leading a cover-up in order to hide the "martyrdom" of their brother
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) October 5, 2017
7. I don't take ISIS' claim at face value. And so far, 0 evidence tying this attack to ISIS has emerged.
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) October 5, 2017
8. But here's why I disagree with those rejecting it out of hand. I've been covering ISIS since 2014 and since then I have kept a timeline
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) October 5, 2017
9. Everytime ISIS claimed an attack in West, I jotted it down. Month later, I've gone back over list & annotated what investigation found
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) October 5, 2017
10. My list is not complete but of the more than 50 cases I have annotated, I could only find 3 false claims.
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) October 5, 2017
However, it’s not as if ISIS is an “honest” organization either.
It’s also not unusual for ISIS to spread misinformation, said terrorism analyst Michael Smith II, who has served as an adviser to Congress, White House officails and the US House Homeland Security Committee.
“It is not without precedent for the Islamic State to issue boldly misleading statements about important events,” Smith said.
For example, ISIS claimed that U.S. forces destroyed the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul. They’ve also inflated the amount of territory under ISIS rule.
“There is certainly a case to be made that much of the content of Islamic State propaganda is false information or obfuscatory information,” Smith said.
The problem is that there is other suspicious behavior from the attack. For example, Paddock recorded himself murdering all of those innocents, why?
If he were an ISIS recruit the recording would make sense because ISIS routinely films their atrocities to use the video in future fear-inducing propaganda. Secondly, authorities have found that Paddock was recently funneling money into the Philippines. Was he directing the money toward ISIS in the Philippines or was he hiding it for his girlfriend’s future use? If he was hiding it, then it would mean that his girlfriend likely knew of his plot.
Now, a financial trail may lead to their claim that this was a “lone wolf” attack and possibly changes things for Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley.
As we reported on Monday, Danley was overseas when her boyfriend whom she had been living with, committed this horrific attack before cowardly killing himself. She had returned back to her home to the Phillippines about a week before the slaughter. While she was initially exonerated of any wrongdoing or involvement in this attack, now authorities have announced that Paddock sent “tens of thousands of dollars” to the Phillippines before he committed mass murder.
ABC News reports:
As authorities pick apart the life of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock, they have come across one major thread of suspicious behavior: how he handled his money.
Paddock’s recent financial transactions have become a key focus for investigators looking to learn more about the Nevada man and why he launched the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
As ABC News first reported Monday, Paddock recently sent tens of thousands of dollars to someone in the Philippines, where his girlfriend was at the time of the attack, and authorities are still trying to determine who received that money, sources familiar with the matter said.
In the last three years alone, more than 200 reports about Paddock’s activities, particularly large transactions at casinos, have been filed with law enforcement authorities, ABC News was told.
The information that’s coming out along with the facts of the attack weren’t adding up until this money portion was added into the equation. While Paddock could have certainly been trying to hide money from the government with his large gambling winnings he was bringing in, there’s also a lot of known involvement of the Islamic State who has a stronghold in Marawi, Phillippines, Newsweek has reported.
But there’s one last bit of information that may be the most intriguing yet. During a public statement to the press, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo suggested the shooter may have been radicalized.
BREAKING: Sheriff Lombardo suggests shooter was "radicalized" & authorities attempting to uncover source. pic.twitter.com/HtoIxRhvvA
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) October 3, 2017
Top of Drudge. Huge development – understanding some kind of motive appears to be near. https://t.co/QlYqauSzaZ pic.twitter.com/5VueY9txF1
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) October 4, 2017
Lombardo wonders if Paddock had been radicalized without authorities being aware of it, and if he was they want to discover when and where this could have happened.
At the same time that the authorities are attempting to figure out what actually took place in Las Vegas they’re also encountering an interesting problem with the people in Stephen Paddock’s life.
While investigators initially cleared Paddock’s girlfriend of wrongdoing she has now become a “person of interest” in the case, likewise Paddock’s brother has been caught in several lies and misstatements to police and to the media.
Eric Paddock set himself up, and now, he’s been caught in some troubling “inconsistencies,” a nice word for lies, that are pretty damning. Eric went on to talk at length about guns, his knowledge of guns, and said his brother “tried the bump stocks, and didn’t like them.” He goes on, “Ask them, I bet they were not attached to the guns he used.” How in the hell does he know that?
…
Fox News investigative reporter Adam Housley confirmed on Sean Hannity’s show that something is “up with the brother.”
“Something isn’t right, I don’t know what it is, I don’t know if it’s connected to the girlfriend, I’m not going to speculate, but there is something really off here,” said Hannity to Housley, who went on to confirm he has spoken to four different investigators who are “connected to this case,” meaning they are part of or privy to police inside information, and he said, “they all have theories, nothing is off the table.”
Then Hannity said, “I talked to the shooter’s brother today, he said he has no idea…” That’s when Housley cut Hannity off, saying, “They [Las Vegas Police Department] have caught him in some misstatements.” Translation, police caught him lying. Eric Paddock’s story from the day after the shooting to 48 hours later had completely changed.
That’s because the police were investigating him and found out he was lying. This guy is in a lot of hot water right now, especially when he let it slip that his brother “had tried bump stocks and didn’t like them.” He went on to say, “Of course the police aren’t telling me anything in case I’m lying to them.” He knows he was caught in lies and is out to defend himself.
It’s all still speculation, but the lingering “Why?” question ensures that we will be reading and talking about this story for a long time to come.
Article posted with permission from Constitution.com
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