One Year After Pulse Nightclub Attack, Orlando Sentinel Gaslights Omar Mateen's Motive

Patrick Poole | 7:19 AM on June 12, 2017

One year ago today, the Pulse nightclub in Orlando became a killing zone and the site of the worst terror attack in the U.S. since 9/11 — 49 patrons killed and 58 more injured:

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During the attack, the killer Omar Mateen called 911 three times and also called a local TV station to claim credit, saying he did the attack in support of the Islamic State.

But in a trend I’ve documented here at PJ Media, despite these obvious “investigative clues,” there are media outlets, family members, and law enforcement officials who still puzzle over Mateen’s motive.

Remarkably, the Orlando Sentinel, the largest newspaper in the city where the Pulse nightclub attack occurred, published an article last week before the one year anniversary of the attack gaslighting the killer’s motive:

Sentinel reporter Paul Brinkmann floated debunked conspiracy theories that Mateen was secretly gay and self-loathing, interviewing two former law enforcement behavioral profilers — neither of whom worked the case.

Brinkmann also interviewed a gay rights activist who claims that ISIS was a convenient scapegoat for his true motives:

Multiple people have said over the past year they think Omar Mateen was a regular at the club or that he was gay himself — even though U.S. law enforcement officials and the FBI reportedly found no evidence to support those theories. Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch originally called the shooting a hate crime and a terrorist attack.

Jessica Stern, executive director of OutRight Action International, the group tracking gay killings, sees no conflict between those ideas, and neither do criminal profilers and others interviewed about Mateen’s motive.

“There are domestic factors and international factors, and both are so important,” Stern said, referring to Mateen’s history, life experiences and ISIS. “For Omar Mateen, ISIS was simply the justification.”

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It bears repeating that these conspiracy theories floated by the media for weeks last year after the shooting were investigated by the FBI, which found zerp support for them:

Are we really to believe that if the FBI had discovered some support for this conspiracy theory, the Obama administration and Attorney General Loretta Lynch wouldn’t have rode that horse until it died?

As I reported here at PJ Media, the New York Times, too, engaged in gaslighting the killer’s motive:

The fact is that Omar Mateen himself repeatedly stated what his motive was — during the attack.

The evidence: three 911 calls, the phone call he made to a local TV station, discussions he had with the hostage negotiator on the scene, posts he made to Facebook during the attack, and even comments he made to the victims.

All of that evidence is consistent and unmistakably clear.

There is no evidence whatsoever supporting the media conspiracy theories now attempting to call into question all of these verified pieces of evidence:

First are the infamous 911 calls made by Mateen where he openly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State:

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As readers might recall, the Obama administration initially redacted the transcript of the 911 calls of any Islamic references:

Only after public criticism did the Obama Justice Department and the FBI release the unredacted transcripts:

The DOJ/FBI joint statement attempted to explain their eyeroll-worthy reasoning for initially redacting the 911 call transcript, claiming the redactions were for the sake of “transparency” but also to be “sensitive”:

The purpose of releasing the partial transcript of the shooter’s interaction with 911 operators was to provide transparency, while remaining sensitive to the interests of the surviving victims, their families, and the integrity of the ongoing investigation. We also did not want to provide the killer or terrorist organizations with a publicity platform for hateful propaganda.

Unfortunately, the unreleased portions of the transcript that named the terrorist organizations and leaders have caused an unnecessary distraction from the hard work that the FBI and our law enforcement partners have been doing to investigate this heinous crime.  As much of this information had been previously reported, we have re-issued the complete transcript to include these references in order to provide the highest level of transparency possible under the circumstances.

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Second is the phone call that Mateen made to a news producer at News 13 Orlando where he said that he did the attack for the Islamic State:

CNN aired an interview with that news producer:

Third, a hostage negotiator on the scene who spoke with Mateen inside the night club says Mateen told him he was retaliating for the U.S. killing of an ISIS leader in Syria a month earlier:

Fourth are the Facebook posts where he pledged his allegiance to Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and threatened more attacks against the West: “[N]ow taste the Islamic state vengeance.”

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It was only after the arrest of Mateen’s wife that the confirmed contents of those Facebook posts were finally revealed by the Justice Department:

https://twitter.com/SeamusHughes/status/840335743126011904

Finally, we have the reported statements he made to the victims inside the nightclub, saying he wanted to stop the U.S. bombing of “his country” (he was born in the U.S.):

What evidence is there for the media conspiracy theories that Omar Mateen was a self-loathing homosexual who had gay lovers, and that’s why he conducted the largest mass shooting in American history?

Well, the FBI investigated those claims and found no evidence. Meanwhile, we have have five different sources of evidence from Mateen himself during the attack that indicate he was driven by his support of and allegiance to the Islamic State.

And yet the media continues to suggest we may never know his motive.

Remarkably, even Obama admitted to the killer’s motivation:

Former FBI Director James Comey gave a press conference where he said that Mateen was “doing this for the leader of ISIS”:

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As I reported here at PJ Media last year, the FBI had investigated Mateen not once, but twice for Islamic extremist statements and ties, making this yet another case of what I have deemed “Known Wolf” terrorism:

The first time was in response to comments he made to co-workers in 2013. And yet the FBI dismissed those concerns because they believed that they were from racists motivated by “Islamophobia”:

The second investigation was in 2014, when they looked into his relationship with a man who attended his Fort Pierce mosque who conducted a suicide bombing in Syria on behalf of al-Qaeda.

And yet the FBI missed many more clues:

But given the evidence available after the attack, there was no mystery on the part of the FBI as to what drove Omar Mateen to walk into the Pulse nightclub a year ago.

Not so, with the media, it seems.

As I’ve reported after a number of these terror attacks, we see from law enforcement, the media, and the family of the attackers repeated assertions that we can just never know what drove these terrorists to commit atrocities:

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And we’ve seen outright gaslighting by the media and activist organizations after these attacks:

At this point, it’s unclear who the media think they’re fooling with articles such as what ran last week in the Orlando Sentinel. Those who at this point want to believe that the Pulse nightlub attack was anything other than an Islamic terror attack are likely not being informed by evidence, but by an agenda. The same could be said for the media that still claims we can never know.

In this instance, it would appear that they don’t want to know.

Patrick Poole
For media inquiries, please contact [email protected]

Patrick Poole is a national security and terrorism correspondent for PJMedia. Follow him on Twitter.
Category: HOMELAND SECURITY
Tags: HOMELAND SECURITY

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