Conspiracy a go-go in the right wing mainstream

Lou Dobbs said it so casually that it sounded like common knowledge.

“You know,” the Fox Business Network host said on his show Thursday, “millions of illegal immigrants cross our borders, and many of them [were] voting in the past election that’s what, just a couple weeks ago, and having an immense impact.”

Dobbs later asked, “Are we just sitting here, helpless against anyone who wants to cross that border, and to have their way with the American way?”

He was chatting with David N. Bossie, a former deputy Trump campaign manager.

Since the midterm elections, no evidence has emerged suggesting results were tainted by illegal votes, from illegal immigrants or anyone else.

The statement was par for the course for Dobbs, who was bashing immigrants before it was fashionable, citing misleading evidence or none at all. Last month, he invoked the word “invasion” dozens of times on his program when talking about the migrant caravan, according to NPR, parroting the same language used by President Trump.

Dobbs didn’t even pretend to have evidence of the illegal voting Thursday night. He just said it, apropos of nothing, during his show, “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”

In the sweaty, waning days of August, I went to a Cheesecake Factory in the Virginia suburbs to learn about a conspiracy that would rock the FBI, if true. The two men who met me for lunch, a retired CIA agent and a former National Security Council official in the Trump administration, were wearing shorts and flip-flops. Otherwise, they were all business, and utterly serious. “There’s substantial evidence that ISIS was involved in this,” the former NSC staffer told me, a few minutes after we had settled into our booth at the back of the restaurant.

He was referring to the worst mass shooting in American history, which happened last year in Las Vegas when Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded more than 800 others at an outdoor concert. According to a final report issued by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on August 3, Paddock’s motive was unclear, but he “acted alone” and had no links to “any hate group or any domestic or foreign terrorist organization.”

My two lunch companions believe otherwise. They belong to a small group of about a dozen members from the intelligence and special operations community pushing the theory that Paddock’s rampage was part of a coordinated anti-Trump plot involving the Islamic State and Antifa, or left-wing “anti-fascist” activists.

I know, it sounds nuts.

The idea sprang from the twisted, feverish mind of Infowars’ Alex Jones days after the Vegas attack. “They found Antifa information in the room,” Jones claimed in one telecast. “The whole thing has the hallmarks of being scripted by deep-state Democrats and their Islamic allies using mental-patient cutouts,” he said. Others of his ilk then amplified the unsubstantiated Antifa-ISIS allegations on social media in what became a frothy concoction of phony tweets, Facebook posts and YouTube videos.

But weeks later, the theory took on a life of its own in an ad hoc “alternative” investigation spearheaded by my two lunch companions—Brad Johnson, a retired CIA officer, and Rich Higgins, a former Pentagon official who last year served for a few months in the White House as director of strategic planning for the National Security Council. (Yes, the same Rich Higgins who infamously got tossed off the NSC for writing a controversial memo warning that “Islamists,” “globalists” and the “deep state” together were trying to subvert Donald Trump’s presidency.) A month after the October shooting in Vegas, Johnson, Higgins and a handful of associates collaborated on a 51-page PowerPoint document based, according to its executive summary, on “open source information with tactical counter terrorism analysis, cyber intelligence, and digital data mining capabilities.” Higgins and Johnson told me they sent the document to contacts in the CIA and FBI, as well as to conservatives in Congress and the media. Higgins claims a current FBI agent in his and Johnson’s circle—who he says had input on the document—“filed it as a formal report with the bureau.”

So far, however, nobody with any real standing has taken the document seriously, much less acknowledged having received it. The findings of the Las Vegas police investigation—in which the FBI was of assistance—directly contradict Higgins and Johnson’s theory. In response to questions about the theory, Sandra Breault, an FBI spokesperson, said only: “The FBI Las Vegas office has the utmost confidence in our agents and analysts’ investigative techniques.” The CIA declined to comment.

THE DAILY CALLER: How do you think the police should handle Antifa, generally?

POTUS: These people, like the Antifa you’re talking about, the Antifa — they better hope that the opposition to Antifa decides not to mobilize. Because if they do, they’re much tougher. Much stronger. Potentially much more violent. And Antifa’s going to be in big trouble. But so far they haven’t done that, and that’s a good thing.

But they better hope that the other side doesn’t mobilize, you understand what I’m saying. Because if you look, the other side is the military, it’s the police, it’s a lot of very strong, a lot of very tough people. Tougher than them. And smarter than them. And they’re sitting back and watching and they’re getting angrier and angrier.