Jan. 1, 2018 - Loomer Unleashed - Laura Loomer
14:17
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| So, Ben, I understand that you have a YouTube channel, and about six months ago or so, you posted a video and you received an alarming comment on your YouTube channel from the Florida shooter, Nicholas Cruz. | ||
| Can you tell me about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it was in September. | |
| Yeah, I received a comment on my channel on one of my videos. | ||
| I don't know which video it was. | ||
| I wish I did because I see a lot of people ask me that. | ||
| And it just said, I'm going to be a professional school shooter. | ||
| So I reported it to the FBI. | ||
| They came out and saw me the very next day, or the next morning after I reported it. | ||
| And then I didn't hear anything else about it until, well, yesterday when after the school shooting happened, they contacted me and came out and met with me again and asked me if I had any further information. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So the so the FBI, how did they, how did they contact you when you first reported it? | ||
| Explain that process. | ||
| What happened exactly? | ||
| You saw the comment. | ||
| Just walk people through the process of reporting a threat to the FBI. | ||
| What did you do exactly? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first I tried to find an email address for the FBI. | |
| I found one that turned out to be not good at email address. | ||
| And so I just called and left a message. | ||
| And they called me back the very next day and asked if they could come out and see me face to face. | ||
| And they came to my office and I shared the information that I had with them. | ||
| So which number did you call exactly? | ||
| Did you call the national hotline number listed for the DC office or did you call like your local FBI office? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I called a local number. | |
| And where do you live? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I live in South Mississippi. | |
| All right. | ||
| And so they were quick to get back to you. | ||
| And then how many agents responded to your office the next day? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Two agents. | |
| Two agents. | ||
| And what was that process like? | ||
| How did that, you know, how did that go down when they came to your office? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they just came in and introduced themselves and asked what I had and I showed them the screenshots and the comments. | |
| And they asked me a few questions about, you know, if I knew anything more. | ||
| And, you know, all I could tell them was, no, all I got here is a screenshot. | ||
| I don't know anything about the guy. | ||
| And they went back on about their business. | ||
| It took, you know, roughly 15 or 20 minutes. | ||
| And they were polite, professional, and, you know, sort of to the point. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So what kind of YouTube channel do you run just so people get an idea of the type of video that this comment was posted under? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I run a YouTube channel that talks about the bell bonding industry, the bellbonding business, and my experiences as a bondsman. | |
| And what was the title of the video that the shooter commented under? | ||
| What do you think piqued his interest for your video? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know what video it was. | |
| So it was just a comment. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, it was a comment on the video, on a video. | |
| I just don't know which video it was. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But all of your videos are generally about the bond industry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
90% of them. | |
| The ones that aren't are about subject matters that are so irrelevant to what's going on, it's not even funny. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, it could have it could be possible that maybe he was, you know, he's been planning this attack for a while now, and maybe he was looking up, you know, legal consequences or bonds or, you know, looking up bond services because a lot of people said that he was a troubled teen. | ||
| So, you know, that could have been what piqued his interest in your video. | ||
| Given the fact that you reported this six months ago, and you know, as we as we saw yesterday, this individual who not only was reported by you to the FBI, but was also, you know, reported by, you know, his classmates and teachers to school officials. | ||
| He was expelled. | ||
| He was known as problematic, wasn't shy about posting his behavior and his weapons and his sick desires to kill innocent animals on his social media. | ||
| How did it make you feel when you found out who the shooter was? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I only learned who the shooter was when the FBI came to my house yesterday. | |
| As far as all the other stuff you just said, I've been so busy with media and interviews today, I haven't actually been able to catch up on the news stories. | ||
| So I'm not aware of the things that you just talked about. | ||
| Oh, well, yeah. | ||
| So not only the thing that people find to be extremely alarming is that not only did you report this comment to the FBI in September, so many months ago, but apparently, according to other students who knew him, they used to joke about how this guy would someday shoot up the school, or if there was a school shooter, it would be him because he was a loner and gave off this weird, depressive vibe. | ||
| He posted pictures of dead animals he shot and killed on his social media. | ||
| His Instagram page had pictures of him with guns and knives. | ||
| And one student said that the shooter would often joke about how he knew the floor plan of the school. | ||
| So people are just kind of shocked that the FBI essentially knew, you know, months before this attack happened that this individual was threatening to do exactly what he did. | ||
| And it didn't, you know, they weren't able to stop him or they didn't really make any effort to stop him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Like I said, this is the real, I have heard some of the reporters talk about he had posted some things on different social media sites, but up until right this moment, I haven't been aware of any of that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So it's interesting the FBI didn't, you know, bring that to your attention or, you know, talk to you about that. | ||
| What did they do when they came to your place? | ||
| I guess you said either, was it yesterday or today? | ||
| When was it that you received a visit? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was yesterday. | |
| So how long after the shooting did you receive a visit from the FBI? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was less than two hours. | |
| Oh, wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it was quick. | |
| All right. | ||
| And how was that visit when they visited you yesterday? | ||
| What happened during that visit? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was just, it was very similar to the first visit. | |
| The lead guy was the same guy. | ||
| I don't know if the second guy was the same guy or not. | ||
| You know, very polite, very professional. | ||
| And he asked me a lot of similar questions as he did the first time. | ||
| And he asked if there had been any further contact, if, you know, I knew anything else, if I'd found anything else out about the original comment. | ||
| And unfortunately, there was nothing more I could tell them or give them. | ||
| And of course, they didn't share their information, their investigation information with me, or they didn't tell me what they had done with the previous information or anything like that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So how do you feel about that? | ||
| How does that make you feel as a citizen reporting an incident or reporting an alarming comment to the FBI and knowing that they clearly didn't really take a lot of action to investigate this guy before he carried out this horrible shooting? | ||
| How does it make you feel knowing that you can report a threat and a tragedy can still occur? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, a lot of the media that I have talked to today has asked similar questions. | |
| And I feel like that people are trying to get me to kind of side with the F to side with that point of view. | ||
| But, you know, the information that I had, the information that I gave them was very minimal. | ||
| It was very little for them to go on. | ||
| You know, and the reality of it is, is you can be anybody you want to be on the internet these days. | ||
| And a username on a YouTube comment just isn't the smoking gun that everybody is trying to make it out to be. | ||
| That's what you think. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, granted, the username was a name. | ||
| I don't know how many people with that name exist in the United States. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's interesting that, you know, that's your viewpoint of the situation because a lot of the discussion now that people found out about your story this morning is how is it that the FBI, right, an intelligence agency, wasn't able to identify this individual when he was posting these comments. | ||
| So a lot of people are very intrigued by this situation. | ||
| Oh, sorry about that. | ||
| It was a notification. | ||
| I said a lot of people are just very intrigued by the situation because they can't fathom how something like this, like the exact scenario which this individual carried out was reported and it was still not prevented. | ||
| So people are just trying to wrap their heads around how the FBI, which, you know, we know our intelligence agencies as being able to find out anything, right? | ||
| Being able to find information out about people that we think is hidden and they still weren't able to. | ||
| So it's shocking to a lot of people. | ||
| And given the political climate and some of the recent FBI, you know, the bad press, I guess you could say, that the FBI has been receiving, some people are wondering, you know, whether the FBI is really competent because this is a recurring theme. | ||
| If you look at a lot of the worst attacks that have happened in this country in the past few months or the past year, the FBI seems to have had foreknowledge of the individuals or they said, oh, this individual was reported to us in the past, or, oh, this person was on one of our terror watch lists. | ||
| So this situation isn't the first time in which a shooter or a killer or terrorist in the United States has been identified by the FBI prior to an attack taking place. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right. | |
| And you know, just to kind of tone myself down a little bit, as you can imagine, today has been kind of a stressful day. | ||
| And I do understand from the average citizen's point of view that, you know, people feel like more could have been done, but I don't know. | ||
| I just don't know the FBI's processes. | ||
| I don't know, you know, I feel like they investigated it, you know, and they didn't come up with anything, but I don't know how they investigated it. | ||
| I don't know what they did or didn't do. | ||
| And it's, I guess that's why you hear a little bit of frustration in my voice is because I just don't know. | ||
| You know, all I know is I had a piece of information. | ||
| I passed it on. | ||
| I did what needed to be done. | ||
| And what they did with that information is not my place to judge them on. | ||
| I feel like that's what people want me to do. | ||
| Right. | ||
| No, that's, you know, I completely understand where you're coming from. | ||
| And I'm sure it's very stressful because, like I said, you're at the forefront of a national tragedy and investigation. | ||
| And I'm sure that when this information was, I'm not even sure. | ||
| How did the press, I believe it was BuzzFeed who first reported on this? | ||
| How did the press first find out about your tip? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I guess they saw the video. | |
| I published a YouTube video about it, and I think it got to a BuzzFeed reporter and they sent me a message through my Facebook account. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Well, do you have anything that you would like to, you know, tell other individuals who may receive threatening comments on their social media from people commenting? | ||
| Do you have any advice for anybody who may encounter similar situations in the future? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Yeah, I would say if you see something that's alarming come across your feed, go ahead and report it to the proper authorities. | ||
| Once you've done that, you've done your part. | ||
| What they do with that information is what they do. | ||
| Well, thank you. |
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