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New Orleans Attacker Visited City Twice and Made Trips to Egypt and Canada

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New Orleans Attacker Visited City Twice and Made Trips to Egypt and Canada

Months before the man behind the New Orleans terror attack plowed a truck into a New Year’s Day crowd, he rode through the area on a bicycle, recording videos of his target using eyeglasses with a built-in camera, investigators said on Sunday. He was back again a few weeks later, they said, probably to continue his plotting.

Those details emerged as investigators revealed more about the driver and the extensive planning behind the attack, which killed 14 people, injured many others and left New Orleans starting 2025 grappling with a cascade of anguish and alarm.

Investigators have been pushing to piece together a clear timeline of the attacker’s actions. The investigation has entailed establishing a beat-by-beat accounting of his movements in the hours immediately before the attack, which included loading guns in his rented pickup truck and planting explosive devices in coolers near the site of the attack, Bourbon Street in the city’s French Quarter.

A far more sprawling search is looking back years to try to understand how a 42-year-old Army veteran with a lucrative job at an international accounting firm came to be radicalized, claiming alignment with the Islamic State terrorist group, better known as ISIS.

Investigators found that the attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, had made trips to Egypt and Canada in 2023. But they said on Sunday that they had yet to determine what role, if any, those travels might have played in his evolving beliefs or his planning for the New Orleans attack.

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“Our agents are getting answers as to where he went, who he met with and how those trips may or may not tie into his actions here in our city,” Lyonel Myrthil, the special agent in charge for the F.B.I. in New Orleans, said at a news conference.

New Orleans has been immersed in grief since the attack, but also marching forward, reopening Bourbon Street to the public and preparing to host the Super Bowl next month, as well as the season of celebration that precedes Mardi Gras. A crowd gathered on Bourbon Street on Saturday evening for a vigil that included a traditional second line. President Biden is scheduled to visit New Orleans on Monday.

”I believe only the power of prayer and faith in God can pull them and us through this time,” Gov. Jeff Landry, Republican of Louisiana, said on Sunday, referring to the pain the families of the victims and the community as a whole were navigating.

The attack ended when Mr. Jabbar, was killed in a shootout with the police that left two officers wounded. Officials praised the police for a swift response that they credited with sparing the city from more carnage.

Mr. Jabbar expressed allegiance to ISIS after a transformation that perplexed and troubled those who knew him. He had the group’s flag on the rented Ford F-150 pickup truck that he used in the attack. In a video that he recorded for his family, he said, “I wanted you to know that I joined ISIS earlier this year.”

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Officials said on Sunday that they continue to believe Mr. Jabbar acted alone in carrying out the attack, and that they were still trying to determine whether he had deeper ties to ISIS. It remained unclear why he chose New Orleans as his target, officials said.

Christopher Raia, an F.B.I. counterterrorism official, said that individuals like Mr. Jabbar — who typically are radicalized online, use easily accessible weapons and act alone or in small clusters — were perhaps the “greatest terror threat” the country faces.

“They are difficult to identify, investigate and disrupt,” he said at the news conference on Sunday.

Investigators were also trying to find out where Mr. Jabbar went and what he did when he visited New Orleans in November, the second pre-attack visit that officials are aware of. The first visit, when he recorded the video images from a bicycle, took place in October.

Investigators discovered that he had left two improvised explosive devices in coolers at nearby locations shortly before ramming his truck into the Bourbon Street crowd early on New Year’s morning. They said he appeared to have had limited experience in building and using explosives, and the devices he created were crude, but they believed some of them could have been effective.

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Mr. Jabbar had a transmitter in the rented pickup. “We believe that the transmitter would have functioned,” Mr. Myrthil said.

One of the coolers had been moved from where Mr. Jabbar had placed it, officials said, but the people who moved it were “unknowing Bourbon Street visitors” who had no connection to Mr. Jabbar.

Both devices were deactivated by the authorities shortly after the ramming attack.

Investigators said Mr. Jabbar had rented the pickup weeks before the attack, and drove it to New Orleans from his home in Texas, arriving on the afternoon of Dec. 31. Investigators found bomb-making materials at a residence he had rented in New Orleans, where he had set a fire just before setting off for the French Quarter. Officials said the fire burned itself out within a few hours and was already extinguished by the time firefighters arrived at the home.

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Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

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Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

Donald Trump has terminated the remaining members of the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials nationwide just a few months before the midterm elections, multiple outlets reported Thursday.

The remaining three commissioners of the four-member bipartisan commission ⁠were forced out on Thursday in different ways. The one Republican appointee resigned and the other ⁠two, Democratic appointees were notified of their terminations via email from ​the White House presidential personnel office.

“On ‌behalf of President ‌Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position ‌as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the email, seen by Reuters, said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Election Assistance Commission serves as a “national clearinghouse of information on election ‌administration”, accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, and maintains the national mail-voter registration form developed by the National ​Voter Registration Act of 1993, according to the commission’s website. The terminations follow Trump and top administration officials’ advocacy to change vote-by-mail requirements and investigations into the 2020 election outcome, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

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“It is ⁠irresponsible and dangerous that this Administration remains dead set on ​causing chaos for ​our election officials across this ​country,” Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes said in a ​Thursday statement. “This ‌move undermines the integrity ​of nonpartisan ​election administration.”

The 2002 law that established the commission, the Help America Vote Act, states the president can appoint replacements to the commission.

It is unclear how Trump will move ahead with the commission.

Reuters contributed reporting

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Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges

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Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges

Former U.S. Olympian David Hearn (left) walks with his attorney Norman Eisen to speak to reporters and protesters gathered after his arraignment at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

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Former U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn pleaded not guilty to damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in D.C. Superior Court Thursday morning.

Federal prosecutors charged Hearn with a single count of destruction of property causing more than $1,000 in damage to the pool.

Hearn has previously claimed, which his attorneys repeated during a short press conference outside the court, that he simply touched the water in the pool out of curiosity.

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The Trump administration had just completed a $14 million renovation of the pool.

But shortly after the work finished, peeling paint and algae gathered in the water. The remodel has been largely criticized as a massive failure and waste of taxpayer dollars.

Superior Court Judge Carmen McLean released Hearn on his own recognizance. His next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 5.

Norm Eisen, one of Hearn’s attorneys, spoke to reporters outside of court following the hearing. He said the administration is using Hearn as a “scapegoat … for their own failures.”

“It is not a crime to touch the reflecting pool, to touch water in the United States of America,” he said.

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Prosecutors say there is a host of evidence against Hearn.

This is a developing story.

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

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