The terrorist behind the New Orleans massacre and the Special Forces soldier who detonated a Cybertruck full of explosives outside the Trump International Las Vevas hotel on Wednesday both served on the same North Carolina Army base, the Post has learned.
Military veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who killed 15 people when he rammed his truck through New Year’s crowds on Bourbon Street, and active-duty Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger, who killed himself and then wounded seven people in the bomb blast, share several uncanny commonalities connecting to their Army service.
YouTube
Both served in the Army. Both served in Afghanistan in 2009. Both previously served at Fort Liberty — formerly Fort Bragg — in Fayetteville, North Carolina. And both carried out extremely rare, apparently premeditated incidences of domestic terrorism on the same New Years Day morning.
President Biden and the FBI said that so far there is no evidence connecting
However, the startling similarities are difficult to ignore, especially given the relatively rare rate of terror attacks and general extremism in the military, Center for Strategic and International Studies senior advisor Mark Cancian told The Post.
“The numbers overall [of extremism in the military community] show that it’s very rare,” he said. “The Biden administration came in [in 2021] convinced that the military was seething with white supremacists and extremists, and then found that there was really quite rare.”
For example, there were 275 allegations of extremism report in the military in 2023 — only two of which were substantiated enough to result in criminal prosecutions, Cancian said.
Given the coincidences, the FBI is still investigating any possible connections, Las Vegas division Special Agent in Charge Spencer Evans said during the Thursday press conference with local police.
“We’ve been working hand in glove, side by side, tirelessly … to determine any potential connection to other events going on in the world, most notably in New Orleans, and then obviously to determine if there’s, if there’s anything else that we need to be tracking down,” he said.
Authorities have received more than 1,000 tips over the past day, which Evans said investigators are sorting through to determine relevant information.
“The challenge that we face moving forward is to separate those [tips] that are pertinent and relevant, and those that can be verified from those from those that have not,” he said. “For example, one of the tips that we received just today relates to information alluding to this subject’s personal experiences related to his time and activity in the military.”
“Again, that’s unverified and uncorroborated, but one of many tips and leads that we’ve following up in the days that come if you have any additional information.”
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill at the same press conference said that while a firm connection between the attacks has not yet been identified, it remains an open possibility.
“Every tip and leave that comes in, every piece of evidence that comes in, we don’t discount. We work it through it,” he said. “You know, it’s a interesting thing during these kinds of investigations that if these turn out to be simply similarities, very strange similarities to have. And so we’re not prepared to rule in, rule out anything at this point.”
He further said more information may be gleaned in the coming days, as there is “a lot more in this investigation” to go through.
“We haven’t even gotten to the phones or the computers, which are usually very, very instructive and informative to us as we investigate. And we’ve got a lot more work to do to trace [Livelsberger,] to see the stores that he went to, to rule out anybody else.”
“Lots and lots of investigative work to do. We’re just trying to give you an update on what update on what we know now that is factual,” he added.
Generally, extremism is rare among service members, both current and former, Cancian said. Since 2021, the Pentagon has paid particular attention to the issue after the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
After nearly one in five defendants in the insurrection case were found to have been military veterans, the Biden administration became convinced with the notion that far-right extremism ran amok in the forces. The assumption, however, proved flawed, Cancian said.
“The Biden administration came into office believing that there were many extremists in the military, particularly white supremacists,” he said. “They did a series of studies and found that the numbers were very small.”
Even more rare in the same demographic is Islamic extremism, which appears to have been the motivation at least behind Jabbar’s attack in Las Vegas, where an ISIS flag was discovered among his belongings.
Cancian told The Post that though the prevalence of terror attacks by troops and veterans is very low, recent examples have most often been tied to Islamic extremism.
In January 2021, the FBI Army Counterintelligence Coordinating Authority arrested Army soldier Cole James Bridges at Fort Stewart in Georgia after he plotted to blow up New York’s 9/11 Memorial and tried to provide support to ISIS.
Nidal Malik Hasan was also active duty Army when he killed 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas on Nov. 5, 2009.
About 10% of criminal radical extremists with military backgrounds were associated with radical Islam groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda, according to a 2022 study by the University of Maryland.
Law enforcement has thwarted several planned Islamic extremist attacks by military members are veterans in recent years.
Still, Livelsberger’s motive remains unknown, but family members described him as a “Rambo-type” who “loved Trump.”
Additionally, investigators have not identified any proof that the two suspect even knew each other, McMahill said.
“They both served in Afghanistan in 2009 — we don’t have any evidence that they were in the same province in Afghanistan, the same location, or the same unit,” he said. “Again, [that’s] something else that remains under investigation, and we also know, of course, that they both used the rental company Toro to rent their vehicles.”
Jabbar was an Army veteran who lived in Fayetteville in 2012, assigned to the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, which is headquartered Fort Bragg — now Fort Liberty — in 2013, according to a Facebook post by the division’s 1st Brigade Combat team in November 2013.
Cybertruck bombing suspect Matthew Livelsberger was an active-duty Green Beret when his rented Tesla truck exploded at the entrance of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas hours after Jabbar’s attack.
Livelsberger, an Army master sergeant, was on leave from his active duty position in Germany with 10th Special Forces Group at the time of the attack.