The FBI has been refusing to answer questions about its role in the 2015 terrorist attack in Garland, Texas, and it’s easy to see why.
On May 3, 2015, two heavily armed, ISIS-inspired Islamists, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, pulled into the parking lot at the controversial “Draw Muhammad” event and opened fire while an undercover FBI agent filmed.
An attorney for an associate of the attackers discovered an FBI agent had photographed 2 men who were shot at seconds before the attack.
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 26, 2017
A traffic officer shot and killed the terrorists before they could do much damage, but there was one casualty — a security guard was shot in the leg during the gun battle.
Patrick Poole reported here at PJ Media last month that the FBI claimed in a statement to 60 Minutes that they had “no advanced knowledge” of the attack:
…the bureau would not agree to an interview. All the FBI would give us was this email statement. It reads: “There was no advance knowledge of a plot to attack the cartoon drawing contest in Garland, Texas.”
Yet the FBI agent had been in contact with Simpson on social media for three weeks prior to the thwarted attack, and had even encouraged him to “tear up Texas.”
And according to the 60 Minutes report, the FBI agent was there taking pictures and he quickly drove away as soon as the shooting began because he didn’t want to blow his cover.
Bruce Joiner, the security guard who was shot in the leg, wants answers.
The question he’s asking is: Is the FBI’s undercover work so important that it’s willing to allow a terrorist event to take place just to maintain the operation?
Joiner’s attorney, Trenton Roberts of Houston, believes the FBI agent did decide to stand down in order to keep his cover. Roberts says because there are so many unusual facts to that day, that only one or two theories can actually fit all the evidence.
“It seems like it had to have been one or the other,” Roberts told the Washington Examiner. “Just a complete botched operation where they [the FBI] don’t want the attack to actually take place, or, it’s something where they need the attack to take place in order for this guy [the agent] to advance in the world of ISIS.”
“And that’s really what I think. I think that they thought – he’s undercover, and in order to advance, he needed to get pictures or video of this attack, and then that would bolster his street cred within ISIS,” Roberts said.
Roberts said he and his client didn’t start off by pushing conspiracies as to what happened that day. He also said his client would prefer to really know what happened that day over taking a settlement check from the government to make his case against the FBI go away.
“It is accusatory,” Roberts acknowledged of his theory. “But at this point, I do feel like when the FBI has given so few answers, and there’s been so many opportunities to do so, you have to conclude that there must be something really worth covering up.”
The FBI declined to comment for this story, a position it has taken with all other major media reports about the Garland attack.
“Bruce is very pro-law enforcement overall, he’s a former police officer, and a current security guard, and so he just wants a full explanation,” Roberts said. “At the beginning, he thought, ‘Surely they have some kind of explanation that actually is going to make sense.'”
“But then as the facts began to come in, it was clear that [this agent] was in some way involved in the planning of it, and was there at the scene,” he said. “And just that they won’t give the victim an explanation, has surprised us all.”
“If you’re going to make an omelette, you’ve got to break some eggs.” That’s what a senior agent in charge of the ATF’s criminally reckless gunrunning operation Fast and Furious famously said when dead bodies kept piling up south of the border.
Did the FBI likewise consider Pamela Geller and the like-minded individuals who participated in the “Draw Mohammed” contest to be expendable?
The chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is also demanding answers.
Sen. Ron Johnson, (R-WI) sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey asking him to explain their conflicting statements about the FBI’s activities leading up to the Garland attack.
But according to the Examiner, the FBI missed the deadline for responding to Johnson’s request.
Joiner and his attorney may end up suing the FBI for the answers.
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