We live in unprecedented times in so many ways, and this week’s tragic shooting at a Dallas ICE facility brings a new wrinkle into our epistemological construct of the world. Typically, you can trust what the FBI says to varying degrees, even under untrustworthy administrations. George W. Bush may have weaponized the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) against the homeland in a way that was a test run for what Trump is doing now, but his FBI wasn’t like, faking crime statistics or evidence at crime scenes. Now we can’t be so sure because a wildly unqualified podcaster toady is running the FBI.
FBI Director Kash Patel posted the below photo of unfired shell casings by the alleged shooter, Joshua Jahn, with one scrawled with “ANTI – ICE.” Patel claimed that “While the investigation is ongoing, an initial review of the evidence shows an idealogical [sic] motive behind this attack (see photo below).”
As someone who works in the world that opposes what ICE is doing, I have never heard or read a single person using this nomenclature. Abolish ICE, yes. Fuck ICE, absolutely. Anti-ICE? Literally the first time I’ve ever seen this phrasing. Not to mention that Patel’s post casts doubt on his own claims, as he wrote “These despicable, politically motivated attacks against law enforcement are not a one-off,” and then ended it with “Thankfully, no law enforcement personnel were injured.”
There are good reasons to doubt Patel’s allegations beyond just my gut instinct and his long history of being full of shit, as he bungled the initial investigation into Charlie Kirk’s murderer. He even drew ridicule from the right over how shambolic his whole operation was, and he had to have an emergency Zoom meeting with 200 FBI agents after his extremely public screw-up. Patel posted on Twitter that the FBI caught “the subject for the horrific shooting today,” and two hours later wrote, “The subject in custody has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement, our investigation continues.”
Patel has already proven that he will peacock for social media and get out over his skis making proclamations about what evidence he does or does not have before he lets the FBI’s lawyers really dig into the actual evidence his field agents have gathered. This is not and never has been a credible man, and just because he holds a position where credibility is critical does not mean he has earned it. If anything, he has widened the chasm between his own and the FBI’s credibility since he took over it. He’s such a clown that even the MAGA diehards can see it, and Fox News is even saying that ten of their little birdies are telling them that people in Trumpworld are trying to get Patel fired because he’s embarrassing them. “The White House, Bondi, Blanche have no confidence in Kash,” one source told them.
Kash Patel is framing this shooting through a left-wing prism. This allows Trump, who just recently signed an executive order classifying the amorphous antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, another phrase with no legal meaning, to post that “the Brave Men and Women of ICE are just trying to do their jobs, and remove the ‘WORST of the WORST’ Criminals out of our Country, but they are facing an unprecedented increase in threats, violence and attacks by Deranged Radical Leftists.” It’s all too convenient to ignore, and the problem for Patel and Trump is that what we know right now does not line up with the ANTI – ICE message scrawled on one of the shell casings.
One detainee is dead, and two others are in critical condition according to DHS. Dallas police said at yesterday’s press conference that no ICE officers were hurt. The shooter fired multiple rounds from an elevated position nearby down into the field office’s sally port, according to an ICE spokesperson, and DHS said he fired “indiscriminately.” Joshua Jaun, the alleged shooter, was found dead with a self-inflicted gun wound nearby. The early reporting on who he was also does not line up with the ANTI – ICE message on one unfired shell casing.
“He didn’t have strong feelings about ICE as far as I knew,” Noah Jahn, Joshua’s brother told NBC News. “I didn’t think he was politically interested. He wasn’t interested in politics on either side as far as I knew.”
Investigative reporter Ken Klippenstein reached out to Jaun’s network of friends and found something similar. “Their accounts paint the picture of someone with a vaguely libertarian bent who despised both major parties and politicians generally (including Trump) but who didn’t engage with politics beyond that,” wrote Klippenstein about his conversation with “Three who knew him since at least middle school.” Like with Kirk’s shooter, the irreverence of the internet seemed to animate his personality, as Jaun reportedly “preferred edgy humor, video games and the message board 4chan, all of which he became increasingly steeped in as he withdrew from social life as well as their own friendships several years ago, they said.”
Both Klippenstein’s and NBC News’ report cast specific doubt on the ANTI – ICE message itself, as Klippenstein reports that “None of his former friends believed that the ‘ANTI-ICE’ inscription could possibly be sincere, feeling such a serious political statement was anathema to who Jahn was. His humor was deeply ironic, often offensive and aggressive to the point of alienation.” NBC News talked to a member of the same Boy Scout troop as Jahn who knew him since his early teens, who said that despite being “upset about how people were not understanding people’s desperation to get out of bad situations and how immigration was being handled as a whole,” Jaun “was pretty against [the notion of gun violence], so that’s why this is making it even more surprising. He was not somebody that would condone those kind of actions.”
As I wrote with Kirk’s shooter, America’s gun violence epidemic does not map neatly on to our politics. Someone willing to throw their life away so they can “indiscriminately” kill others, or a famous YouTuber, is not someone operating under the same kind of logic those of us not willing to do these sick acts are. The lone commonality across all these shootings is the tool used to kill people, and until guns are not easier to get than an appointment with a therapist in America, senseless and tragic acts of violence will keep happening. The reporting from multiple sources and the “indiscriminate” description of the incident by DHS does not line up with the FBI’s story of an “idealogical” and “ANTI – ICE” left-wing extremist specifically targeting ICE agents while not harming any of them. Given how Patel has already bungled another high-profile investigation by telling a tale that didn’t align with the facts but did with his boss’s wishes, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that the FBI has a serious credibility crisis and it’s on them now to demonstrate why they’re not as full of shit as their director has long proven himself to be.
