The Justice Department proudly announced the first FBI terror arrest of the the Trump administration on Tuesday: an elaborate sting operation that snared a 25-year old Missouri man who had no terrorism contacts besides the two undercover FBI agents who paid him to buy hardware supplies they said was for a bomb — and who at one point pulled a knife on him and threatened his family.
Robert Lorenzo Hester of Columbia, Missouri, didn’t have the $20 he needed to buy the 9-volt batteries, duct tape, and roofing nails his new FBI friends wanted him to get, so they gave him the money. The agents noted in a criminal complaint that Hester, who at one point brought his two small children to a meeting because he didn’t have child care, continued smoking marijuana despite professing to be a devout Muslim.
One of the social media posts that initially caught the FBI’s attention referred to a group called “The Lion Guard.” Hester told one of the undercover agents the name came from “a cartoon my children watch.”
But according to the DOJ press release, Hester had plans to conduct an “ISIS-sponsored terrorist attack” on President’s Day that would have resulted in mass casualties had it succeeded.
News reports breathlessly echoed the government’s depiction of Hester as a foiled would-be terrorist. But the only contact Hester had with ISIS was with the two undercover agents who suggested to him that they had connections with the group.
–Murtaza Hussain
Trump’s First Terror Arrest: a Broke Stoner the FBI Threatened at Knifepoint
Good to know that all the sovereign citizens loons have been locked up, nobody’s vandalizing or burning mosques, synagogues, or African American churches, no SWATing attacks occurred, and the three gun shops in Georgia that sell half the illegal guns used in NYC are closed down. If the federal police are keeping busy with this sort of nonsense I can breathe freer.
The FBI’s counter-terrorism unit is a joke. Part of me wonders if Comey feared Clinton would clean it up. Obama couldn’t, since he’d be seen as weak on crime/terror. Clinton had less of that baggage, and might have made the FBI shape up.
It’s a ridiculous program. It’s essentially pre-crime. Target someone you think MIGHT be likely to commit a crime, then entrap them into doing it. I’m surprised any judge lets this stand. Half the time the “suspect” is identified by someone else who wants to avoid jail time for drugs or petty theft.
In happier news, Jewish & Muslim victims of vandalism have been helping each other out. It’s good to see.
The young, physically fit guy with the short haircut that just joined your Black Bloc group and really want’s for you to make a bomb is a Fed, for sure. I have seen the solidarity American Muslims and Jews are showing for each other now and it fans the flames of hope.
The FBI can do some good: http://www.newsweek.com/my-life-white-supremacist-475032 but often they pull shit like the above and it just ruins their rep.
What an amazing story. And for $500 a month! That is one brave guy.
There’s a retired NBA referee, Bob Delaney, who was a mob informant. He got tons of gangsters arrested. It was always funny in a game when a player arguing a call would get up in Delaney’s face. Um, this guy ran with the mob, I doubt he’s easily intimidated.
I guess nowadays Delaney works with people who have PTSD. Because, shocker, he’s been afflicted by it. No doubt!
Actually, Robert Lorenzo Hester does have connections to the perpetrators of the Bowling Green Massacre, the attack in Sweden, etc…
The ONLY way to prevent fake terrorist attacks is to arrest fake terrorists BEFORE we pretend an attack occurred!