Is the Justice Department Hiding ISIS Connection in NY-NJ Bombings?

Images released of the journal of Ahmad Khan Rahami, the suspected NY-NJ bomber, show mention of a recently killed ISIS leader, but that reference is curiously missing from the federal indictment filed against him yesterday.

Is the Justice Department again trying to hide an obvious ISIS connection or inspiration from this past weekend’s attacks, just as they did when they censored Orlando mass killer Omar Mateen’s pledge to ISIS?

Reporters began showing pages of Rahami’s journal earlier today:

First look at bloody journal discovered with alleged bomber Ahmad Rahami, this page cites Al Qaeda & ISIS leaders pic.twitter.com/AT9VsZS9qu

— Mike Levine (@MLevineReports) September 21, 2016

One of the references on the page is to “Brother Adnani,” an ISIS leader killed in a U.S. drone strike just a few weeks ago.

Media reports place Adnani at the head of the ISIS unit responsible for conducting external terror attacks.

Terror expert Tom Joscelyn noted the Adnani mention, as well as other ISIS-related items, from Rahami’s journal.

8. Also “Dawla” is clearly visible under “Brother Adnani.” That’s almost certainly a reference to Islamic State as well. Not in complaint.

— Thomas Joscelyn (@thomasjoscelyn) September 21, 2016

But the terror indictment against Rahami filed in federal court yesterday omits mention of these ISIS references.

Page 12 of the indictment discusses the terror references found in Rahami’s journal:

But, again, the indictment makes no mention of the two clear ISIS-related references, namely Adnani and Dawla.

What is the Department of Justice hiding?

This is reminiscent of the released transcript of Orlando mass killer Omar Mateen’s pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State as he was conducting the terror attack that killed 49 this past June. The statements were made in a phone call to a local Orlando TV station during the attack.

As readers might recall, all ISIS references from Mateen’s statements were noted with [omitted]. When called out by the media on the censoring of the transcript, the Justice Department first defended their omission, and then quickly relented and released the unredacted transcript showing Mateen’s pledge of allegiance to ISIS.

Bridget Johnson noted here at PJ Media that the White House was quick to distance itself from the Justice Department’s redaction.

So we have in the case of Ahmad Rahami some indication that he was inspired by a number of Islamic terrorist leaders, including ISIS leader Adnani.

Was he in contact with ISIS operatives overseas? So far, there’s no indication of that. But these references may show that Rahami was acting in response to Adnani’s call for Muslims in non-Muslim countries to conduct attacks simliar to what we saw in NY and NJ over the weekend.

So after the Justice Department’s Orlando debacle, why would they be trying to again censor any ISIS-related references in making the case against Ahmad Rahami?

As Ben Weingarten noted after the Orlando attack, these [omitted] redactions are the “sine qua non of America’s see-no-Islam national security policy.”

What this second round of [omitted] redactions may indicate is the Obama administration’s attempts to conceal how that national security policy — one embraced by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — is failing.

Stay tuned.