New Orleans suspect posted videos about ISIS before attack: latest updates

In the summer, the Greater New Orleans Foundation received $1.25 million from Gayle Benson, the New Orleans Saints owner and New Orleans Pelicans governor.

In the wake of the New Year’s Day attack on Bourbon Street, the money is now being put to good use through its disaster relief fund.

“In the wake of the tragic events on Bourbon Street this New Year’s, we are fully committed to supporting the victims and their families,” Benson said in a statement. “It is our collective responsibility to support our community in times of hardship, and I will continue to stand with New Orleans as we heal together.”

Shamsud Din Jabbar’s military commander shared his shock of a man he described as once embodying “quiet professionalism”.

Rich Groen served with Jabbar during a tour in Afghanistan after being deployed between February 2009 and January 2010.

Writing on X, Groen said: “Jabbar worked quietly and professionally in the S1 shop and as a mail clerk, ensuring the little things that kept us all connected to home were done with care and precision. He was a great Soldier, someone who showed discipline and dedication.

He continued: “To think that the same individual who once embodied quiet professionalism could harbor so much hate, leading to such unspeakable atrocities, is incomprehensible and heartbreaking.

“​​This transformation is a stark reminder of the dangers of unchecked anger, isolation, and hate.”

Pressed by Fox News anchor Sandra Smith on whether he was “privy” to any information proving such a link, Homan acknowledged he was not before saying he felt there were just “too many coincidences” between the two incidents.

Additionally, Homan repeatedly tied the “threats at the southern border” to the two deadly events, claiming that they showed the United States “needs to secure the border” because it’s in “grave danger” — even though both of the suspects were American-born citizens who served in the military.

During a press conference on Thursday, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters that the man who died in the Cybertruck explosion outside Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas was Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old U.S. Special Forces soldier. According to a family member, Livelsberger was a “100 percent patriot” who loved Trump.

Chris Pousson, Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s high school friend, said that the New Orleans attacker frequently posted about his Islamic faith on Facebook which was “always positive”.

“It was always positive – peace be with you, uplifting type of stuff,” Pousson told NBC News. “Nothing that he posted online that I saw was negative.”

He added that he was caught by surprise after learning of the attack, and “didn’t see this coming from a mile away”.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s Houston, Texas, neighbor said the New Orleans attacker told him he was moving to Louisiana on New Year’s Eve morning.

The neighbor, who remains anonymous, told NBC News that he offered to help Jabbar after he  saw him loading a white truck outside his property.

According to the Greenspoint resident, Jabbar said he was moving to Louisiana because “he got a job over there”.

The neighbor learned of Jabbar’s true intentions some time on New Year’s Day.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S. Army veteran, has been named by authorities as the suspect. He carried an ISIS flag on the vehicle used to mow down pedestrians.

Addressing the nation following the attack, President Joe Biden said Jabbar posted videos to social media “indicating he was inspired by ISIS, expressing a desire to kill.”

But how much of a threat does the extremist Islamist militant group pose to Americans today?

Bomb-making materials linked to the New Year’s Day terrorist attack in New Orleans were recovered by the FBI at Shamsud Din Jabbar’s Houston, Texas, home.

Jabbar, a US citizen and Army veteran who claimed he joined ISIS in the summer, placed explosive devices in the area before the attack, sources told ABC News.

After executing a search warrant at his Greenspoint home, federal agents uncovered bomb-making materials including “precursor chemicals”.

Frustrated CNN news host Jim Acosta accused Donald Trump himself Thursday of peddling “fake news” with his repeated lie that the deadly New Orleans truck attacker was an immigrant.

Shamsud Din Jabbar, who was fatally shot by police, was a born-in-the-U.S.A. American citizen and a military veteran.

Yet after Jabbar drove a truck through a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street in the early hours of New Year’s Day, killing at least 14 people in what the FBI has called an act of terrorism, Trump crowed: “When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true” – which in fact didn’t turn out to be true.

“Here he goes again,” Acosta said of the president-elect amid a heated interview with Neil Chatterjee, who was Trump’s commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in his last administration. “He talks about everybody else being fake news, and he’s the one peddling fake news.”

Mary Papenfuss has the story.

Law enforcement agencies were warned ahead of the holidays about potential lone offenders using vehicle ramming to attack people, weeks before a terrorist drove into a crowd in New Orleans on New Year’s Day.

The Independent has reached out to the department for comment.

Ariana Baio has the story.

New Orleans officials are promising the city is safe as they prepare for today’s Sugar Bowl and the Super Bowl next month. But planning for those events might have allowed a suspected terrorist to rampage through the city’s most popular area.

Those “bollards” — installed as part of a years-long security plan for the tourist-heavy neighborhood — were intended to block that exact type of attack from happening.

But they were in the middle of being replaced in time for the city to host February’s Super Bowl LIX, which falls in the middle of a busy Carnival season calendar leading up to Mardi Gras day on March 4.