BURSTTom Homan, tapped by President-elect Trump as his "border czar," stressed that the incoming administration has to keep an eye on potential extremism within the U.S. military and other agencies after the attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas on New Year's Day.
“The incoming administration needs to look at insider threat[s], I mean insider threat analysis has been put on the back seat by this administration,” Homan told Fox News on Thursday.
“And we’ve got two people who served in the military that committed these terrorist acts,” he said. "We need to really dig down into insider threat in our military, in our federal servants, whether it’s the FBI, whether it’s other agencies, whether it’s the military. Insider threats [are] a big issue, especially in our industry where they have infrastructure responsibilities.”
Homan’s remarks on the network come as it was confirmed that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the man who drove a Ford pickup truck into a crowd of people in New Orleans, killing at least 14 and injuring dozens more, previously served in the Army from 2007 to 2020.
Jabbar, a U.S. citizen, was then shot and killed by police. Law enforcement also noted that they found an Islamic State (ISIS) flag in the suspect’s vehicle and posts on social media sympathizing with the U.S.-designated terrorist group.
In Las Vegas, the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Las Vegas Trump International Hotel killed one person and injured seven more, according to authorities. Officials say they believe the act was done intentionally.
The person inside the vehicle was identified Thursday as Matthew Alan Livelsberger, 37, who shot himself right before the explosion, according to Las Vegas police. Camping fuel canisters and fireworks mortars were found in the back of the Cybertruck. Livelsberger was an active-duty member of the U.S. Army.
Both suspects reportedly rented their vehicles from the car-sharing app Turo. The Biden administration, however, concluded that the incidents were not related, and the FBI said Jabbar acted alone.
While the two attacks were not the first examples of military extremism performed by armed service members, they did raise questions about the number of unstable and radical active duty service members and veterans, and whether the officials' efforts to assist them are working out.
Homan, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, said “we need to drill down and find out about this inspiration and what insider threat is currently in the United States government, military and United States government service, and address those right away.”
“We’ve got to address the insider threat,” he added. “We have to. We can’t let this go on any further.”