New Orleans attacker: How false claims about the suspect spread

New Orleans attacker: How false claims about the suspect spread

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the 42-year-old suspected driver in the New Year’s truck attack in New Orleans, was a United States citizen and US Army veteran.

However, President-elect Donald Trump, Republican leaders, and influencers on social media quickly made speculations that Jabbar entered the US illegally shortly after the attack, which left 15 people dead and is currently being investigated as a terrorism plot.

Citing Fox News, &nbsp, social&nbsp, media accounts on January 1 said Jabbar “crossed the US-Mexico border at the Eagle Pass crossing just two days ago” and that there was “blood on the hands of the Biden administration”.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the US representative for Georgia, reported on X on a 38-second Fox News clip that Jabbar “is said to have crossed the border in Eagle Pass TWO DAYS AGO!!! Shut the border down!! “!

Donald Trump Jr&nbsp, said on X that Biden’s “parting gift” to the US was “migrant terrorists”.

On Truth Social on January 1st, the president-elect made reference to the attack&nbsp, saying that “the criminals coming in are much worse than the criminals we have in our country.”

Law enforcement claim that Jabbar struck Bourbon Street crowds with a rented Ford F-150 pickup truck just before 3 a.m. on New Year’s Day before passing away in a police shootout.

According to “federal sources,” the truck had crossed the US southern border two days prior and had driven it, according to a Fox News broadcast on January 1.

Reporters returned this shortly after airing it. The network issued a correction within an hour saying that the truck entered the country in mid-November&nbsp, and&nbsp, it wasn’t driven by Jabbar.

However, it was too late to make up any falsehoods about Jabbar’s illegal immigrant status. Fox News contacted PolitiFact, but the publication did not respond.

Here’s how misinformation about the suspect spread.

Fox News ‘ reporting timeline

As officials worked to confirm details about the attack, Fox News reported that the pick-up truck Jabbar rented came into the US at the Eagle Pass, Texas, border crossing.

A Fox News reporter reported on January 1 at 10:40 am ET (15:00 GMT) that federal sources had license plate information that indicated the suspect and the truck were at the southern border days prior to the attack:

“The suspect drove a truck with that Texas license plate, according to federal sources, and he is only entering our newsroom from Griff Jenkins and David Spunt working with federal sources on this. He is also operating a truck with that Texas license plate through Bourbon Street. According to their sources, to Spunt and Jenkins, this person came through Eagle Pass, Texas, two days ago”.

At about 10: 47am ET (15: 47 GMT), Fox News correspondent David Spunt made clear that reporters didn’t know whether Jabbar was driving the truck.

“We’re hearing that the vehicle was intercepted at Eagle Pass, Texas, two days ago from Mexico, where it was reported to have entered the country. To be clear, we don’t 100 percent know that this man, and we do know the suspect is a man, was the person driving that across the border. That is unclear at this point”, Spunt said.

“We only know that a border crossing reader picked up the actual license plate. According to two federal law enforcement sources, it was picked up crossing at that border station in Eagle Pass, Texas, two days ago. We are providing information to our viewers as we can, the most accurate information, so that’s what we know at the moment. I am aware that raises more questions than answers.

Trump sent his Truth Social post about “the criminals coming in” at 10: 48am ET (15: 48 GMT).

At 11: 55am ET (16: 55 GMT), Fox News corrected the timeline&nbsp, on air, saying that the truck crossed the border in mid-November and confirmed that it wasn’t driven by Jabbar.

“Our sources now tell Fox that that truck from Eagle Pass, Texas, did not cross two days ago. According to Fox News correspondent Bryan Llenas, the driver who crossed the border does not appear to be the shooter when it crossed on November 16.

Fox News on-air personalities did not repeatedly repeat the original inaccurate report throughout the day, according to PolitiFact.

Despite Fox’s correction, many of these erroneous posts remain online without clarification.

Long after law enforcement established Jabbar as a US citizen, Trump continued to support the inaccurate immigration argument in another Truth Social post on January 2.

“With the Biden ‘ Open Border’s Policy ‘ I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe”, Trump wrote. “That time has come, only worse than ever imagined”.

Source: Aljazeera

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