“This is Middle America,” Mr. Grimm declared moments after taking the stage. Before the national anthem, he not so subtly invoked Mr. Trump to cheers: “I know no one here is going to be taking a knee.”
With his law enforcement credentials, tart tongue and square jaw, Mr. Grimm, the rare elected Republican in New York City, was once seen as a future star. Troubles with the law cut short his career.
There was no doubt that Mr. Grimm made an impression in his two terms, after winning in the Tea Party wave of 2010. In 2014, he beat back a Democratic challenger while under federal indictment, only to give up his seat when he pleaded guilty to tax fraud for underreporting wages at a restaurant he owned and filing false tax documents.
“I know what he did was wrong. He did his time,” said Cathy Reid, a Staten Island Republican who arrived to support Mr. Grimm’s comeback in a three-wheeled motorcycle, wearing a black helmet with an “If I’d shot you when I wanted, I’d be out by now” sticker on it.
“Every business does that,” she said. “He was made an example of.”
While Mr. Grimm said he was “truly sorry” for his transgressions, saying he wished he was “perfect but I am not,” he also made light of them. He said he first began working for his father at age 11. “Yeah, it was off the books,” he joked.
Some in Staten Island said they welcomed Mr. Grimm’s blunt manner, especially after seeing his outspoken advocacy after Hurricane Sandy.
“He got down and dirty,” said Thea Friscia.
On the way to the rally, her friend Cathy Bannon stopped at a dollar store to pick up a “Welcome Home” balloon, like for those returning from hospital stays, in a show of support. “Michael was the only one who stood with us,” she said.
Another woman, Maria Romagnuolo, added that Mr. Grimm had gotten her disabled son a “mobility scooter” after the storm. “He’s one of us,” she said.
Mr. Donovan, a former Staten Island district attorney, is expected to have the support of much of the Republican political apparatus both in New York and nationally. He has $300,000 cash on hand.
Mr. Grimm ended June with $420,000 in unpaid campaign legal bills. He entered into a “confidential settlement” with the law firm he owed, according to spokesman Michael Caputo. He also owed nearly $150,000 in tax restitution payments. Mr. Grimm borrowed money from family and “a friend” to pay off that debt, Mr. Caputo said, adding that the lenders would be disclosed on a future financial disclosure form.
At his rally, the signs had the required Federal Election Commission disclosures either added with stickers or taped onto them.
Jessica Proud, a spokeswoman for Mr. Donovan, dismissed Mr. Grimm’s candidacy: “We’re not really concerned about a challenge from a convicted felon who was rated one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress.”
The bigger fear among national Republicans is that Mr. Grimm would lose the primary to Mr. Donovan and then seek to stay on the ballot as a third-party candidate, dividing the vote and opening a pathway for Democrats.
“He’s keeping all of his options open,” Mr. Caputo said.
A former campaign adviser to Mr. Trump, Mr. Caputo is helping Mr. Grimm make the case he would be a stronger ally to the president. “It’s time to make anti-Trump Republicans pay a price at the polls,” Mr. Caputo said.
Mr. Grimm once famously threatened to throw a reporter who asked about the federal investigation off a balcony during a television interview. “I’ll break you in half,” Mr. Grimm said then. “Like a boy.”
He initially blamed the reporter for his question but later apologized.
When Mr. Grimm was sentenced to prison, the judge in his case told him, “Your moral compass, Mr. Grimm, needs some reorientation.”
Mr. Grimm said on Sunday that he had matured. Still, he remained ever combative.
“I took my lumps like a man,” Mr. Grimm said. “We took more than we should have.”
Continue reading the main story

Facebook Inc.’s platform was a crucial messaging tool for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to the campaign’s digital director — who told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he hand-picked pro-Trump “embeds” from the company to help him use the platform in targeted ways.
“Twitter is how (Trump) talked to the people; Facebook was going to be how he won,” Brad Parscale told “60 Minutes,” according to an excerpt of an interview that the program intends to air tonight. The social media platform was particularly valuable because it allows for targeted messaging, Parscale said, according to the excerpt.
Facebook’s employees showed up for work at his office multiple days a week to provide guidance on how to best use the company’s services, Parscale said in the interview excerpt. “I wanted people who supported Donald Trump,” he said — and he questioned the workers about their political views.

Parscale didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A Facebook spokesman said the company provided the Trump campaign with the same guidance and services it offers any major advertiser.
Facebook has found itself at the center of multiple inquiries into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election. The social-media giant said it has so far found $100,000 in advertising spending linked to a Russian troll farm that has ties to the Kremlin. The company turned over details on the ads to Congress and to special counsel Robert Mueller 3rd, who is leading the criminal investigation into Russia’s campaign meddling and possible links to Trump’s associates.
A person familiar with the company’s work for the Trump campaign took issue with Parscale’s use of the word “embeds” to describe its employees because it implies that the campaign work was their sole focus. The workers had tasks for other clients as well, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the matter is sensitive.

The company offered Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton the same opportunity, the person said.
Although federal election law generally bars corporations from aiding political campaigns, there’s nothing wrong with a company providing training and services to a campaign if it offers the same services to every client spending similar amounts, said Larry Noble, former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission.
“If you’d do it for any customer, it’s OK,” Noble said, adding that the services have to be offered to all customers. “It can’t be just for political campaigns.”
Facebook was especially useful in reaching rural voters, Parscale told “60 Minutes,” according to the published excerpt. “So now Facebook lets you get to … 15 people in the Florida Panhandle that I would never buy a TV commercial for,” he said.

Exactly a year after U.S. intelligence issued a stern warning about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the Trump administration has failed to fill key homeland security posts responsible for preventing another Kremlin assault on the voting system.
Not only that, the White House hasn’t even nominated someone to replace now-White House chief of staff John Kelly as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), or someone to run its units responsible for protecting the nation’s strategic infrastructure, which includes federal, state and local voting systems. Both are in the hands of “acting” officials.
“The administration is having a hard time finding individuals that want to do the job, could do a good job, and could pass Senate confirmation,” a congressional expert tells Newsweek, speaking candidly only on the basis he not be quoted by name.
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President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the Homeland Security Department’s headquarters in Washington on January 25. He announced two immigration-related executive orders, including one to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. Jonathan Ernst/REUTERS
“The second thing is, the administration doesn’t seem to want to have anybody head up to the Hill and testify on issues that would be hot-button issues, namely anything to do with election security, cyber security, or the Russian acts from last year.”
Unless the administration puts its own political appointees in place at DHS, analysts say, the department will struggle to get protective systems up and running in time for the 2017 primaries and state and local races, let alone the 2018 elections. Acting department heads just don’t have the same powers of persuasion as people appointed by the president.
DHS‘s National Protection and Programs Directorate, or NPPD, responsible for thwarting foreign cyberattacks on the nation’s infrastructure, is currently being run by Acting Undersecretary Christopher C. Krebs, a former Microsoft lobbyist and cybersecurity policy chief.
“It being vacant hurts,” Erik Rasmussen, a former U.S. Secret Service prosecutor and special agent, tells Newsweek. “The head of that unit has deep cyber operational control and has a critical role to play in any critical infrastructure decision.”
Nor were several congressional officials responsible for homeland security oversight able to identify anyone in charge of the Election Infrastructure Cybersecurity Working Group, which, according to an NPPD announcement in July, was embarking on an ambitious program to integrate DHS with “not only state and local election officials, but also other federal agencies.”
DHS is also launching a Government Coordinating Council to liaise with the bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission and 25 state and local officials, but “the membership and structure is still being finalized,” a department official tells Newsweek.
Three months later, the elections unit, “has not gone out and talked with state election officials to determine what exactly [they] need to increase their own cybersecurity defenses, and what kind of authorities the federal government might need to be able to help provide that assistance,” the congressional expert said. They are “just starting to look at it right now.”
At a press conference last week, Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that members of the panel shared a “general consensus” of agreement on the conclusions of last January’s intelligence community assessment that the Kremlin’s effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign was directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The overall theme of their involvement in the U.S. election was to create chaos at every level,” Burr said, declining to share another conclusion of the intelligence agencies that Putin’s aim was to tilt voters away from Hillary Clinton and toward Donald Trump.
The entrance to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Cyber Crimes Center is seen in this U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) building in Fairfax, Virginia, U.S. on July 21, 2015. Courtesy Josh Denmark/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Handout via REUTERS Reuters
Burr also said he was, “pleased with the progress” the homeland security department was making to prevent further election interference. But Democrats on Capitol Hill unanimously disagreed with that statement.
In a statement to Newsweek, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, called Trump “irresponsible and reckless” for “leaving  leadership positions at our cybersecurity agencies unfilled…almost ten months into this administration.”
Likewise, New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told Newsweek, “what we urgently need is a genuine effort from congressional Republicans and the Trump administration to work with us…especially given the fast-approaching 2017 election…” On Thursday, the committee approved a bill introduced jointly by Hassan and Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio that would enlist “‘white-hat’—that is, ethical—hackers to help identify unique and undiscovered vulnerabilities in the DHS networks and information technology.”
Three weeks ago, DHS surprised election officials in 21 states with the news that Russian hackers had tried to access their voter information. On September 28, according to The Huffington Post, election officials in Wisconsin and California said DHS had “provided them with additional information showing that Russian hackers actually scanned networks at other state agencies unconnected to voter data.”
At a September 27 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, the panel’s top Democrat, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, said she was “worried about how long it’s taken us to notify the states about the potential efforts to scan voter registration files in their states…” And she asked Trump administration officials, including acting DHS secretary Elaine Duke, “what is our strategy going forward? How are we going to do what needs to be done to notify the American public if this is going on, and prevent it from actually happening in all of these various ways that Russia played around in our democracy?”
Duke responded that DHS had learned to “notify the right senior [state] official” about Russian election intrusions.
Christopher Wray, who Trump appointed to replace James Comey as FBI Director, told McCaskill that, “We are surging more resources specifically focused on the upcoming elections…”
When they issued their joint statement on Russian election meddling last October 7, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper claimed that DHS was “providing several services to state and local election officials to assist in their cybersecurity,” including, “‘hygiene’ scans of Internet-facing systems, risk and vulnerability assessments, information sharing about cyber incidents, and best practices for securing voter registration databases and addressing potential cyber threats.”
Rasmussen, now a top cyber official with the global investigations firm Kroll, called the hygiene scan “a really good program,” but said, “I’m not sure how many entities actually use it.”  In any event, he said, ”there are still too many voting platforms—vote by mail, paper vote, online vote, machine vote at a polling station—that are really vulnerable to outside sabotage or manipulation.”
DHS did not respond to several questions about its cybersecurity measures related to the elections.
“Overall,” says the congressional homeland security expert, “our assessment is that DHS is just really getting serious about this right now.”
How serious remains to be seen. As Laura Rosenberger, a senior former Obama administration national security official, puts it: “The person at the very top continues to deny that this is even an issue.” Last week, Trump tweeted that the Senate Intelligence Committee should be investigating “fake news,” not Russia’s election meddling and alleged collusion with him and his associates.
“I don’t know where you go from there,” Rosenberger added. “We need a whole government strategy on this, and that requires White House leadership.”
It’s not likely to come, former Obama White House Counsel Bob Bauer wrote this week.
“A whole government approach would require an executive fully prepared to work with the Congress to meet this challenge,” Bauer said. “President Donald Trump has given no such indication: quite the opposite.”

In 2008, during the largest terrorism funding trial in U.S. history, United States v. Holy Land Foundation, a document published in 1991 outlined Muslim plans to take over America.  An Explanatory Memorandum:  On the General Strategic Goal for the Group, seized in a 2004 FBI raid of the Virginia home of a Muslim Brotherhood operative, was presented during the trial as evidence of “a Civilization-Jihadist Process.” It outlined the Muslim Brotherhood goal to conduct a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated.”
For several decades, this well-organized and well-funded effort to subvert our constitutional republic and replace it with an Islamic government under Islamic law has focused on infiltrating all levels and branches of the U.S. government. More recently, the Muslim Brotherhood presence within the American political landscape has intensified, accelerated, and become more visible with the establishment of several nonprofit political action organizations. The Muslim Brotherhood stated goal of transforming American society from within in preparation for an eventual takeover is clearly moving forward fueled by the efforts of these groups and their burgeoning success within the umma or Muslim community.

As early as 1987, a declassified FBI confidential informant document described the Muslim Brotherhood as “political action front groups with no traceable ties to Muslim groups” that are organizing external political support to influence both public opinion in America and the U.S. government and its leadership. The informant who disclosed this information told authorities that the MB acknowledged the need to “peacefully get inside the United States Government” for the purpose of meeting “the ultimate goal of overthrowing all non-Islamic governments.”
In 2010, one such “peaceful” group, Project Mobilize, was created by M. Yasser Tabbara to empower and engage the political potential of the Muslim community.  Its mission statement called for the exploitation of the growing political capital of the umma, the promotion of issues important to Muslim Americans and the development of strategies for political advocacy on their behalf.  In 2011, Project Mobilize began fielding its first Muslim candidates for political office.
Project Mobilize’s founder, Tabbara, is a former executive director the Chicago chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate and unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial. Other board members include Safaa Zarzour, the secretary general of another unindicted co-conspirator and Muslim Brotherhood front, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and Oussama Jammal, vice president of the Mosque Foundation, a known center for terrorism fundraising and haven for Hamas operatives.
In 2014, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., representatives from eight Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups announced formation of the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), a political party for Muslims and the first religion-based political party in U.S. history. At the meeting, the founders disclosed their plans to expand Muslim participation in the American political process by encouraging more Muslims to vote, work on political campaigns and run for office themselves.
Oussama Jammal, who was involved in fundraising for convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian and serves as director of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliate, the Muslim American Society (MAS), headed the new organization. MAS, created in the early 1990s, was itself begun as the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and was designated a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates. Mazen Mokhtar, another USCMO founding member, also had MAS ties, having served as its executive director. An Egyptian-born imam, Mokhtar served as webmaster for a site that solicited funds for Taliban and Chechen jihadists. In 2007, he was indicted by then-New Jersey Attorney General Chris Christie for tax evasion and filing false tax returns.
In 2015, a new organization, Jetpac Inc. (Justice, Education and Technology Policy Advocacy Center) was begun by Nadeem Mazen, Massachusett’s first Muslim city council member. Jetpac was established as an “open call for American Muslims to immerse themselves in local politics.” The group trains American Muslim community leaders and educates them about the political process. According to their website, they have prepared more than 15 aspiring candidates for office in Maine, New York, Rhode Island, and California. The group’s activities include development of proprietary software for social media outreach, fundraising and canvassing techniques, media communication and campaign strategy skills as well as advice on combatting negative impressions of Muslims. In addition, Jetpac teaches a course on U.S. government and politics at a Massachusetts Islamic school that focuses on grassroots organizing and the history of the civil rights movement.
Following his stint as a Cambridge City Council member, Mazen, a founding member of CAIR Massachusetts and former president of MIT’s MSA, announced plans to run for Congress as the third elected Muslim after Keith Hakim Ellison (D-MN) and Andre Carson (D-IN). Just this week, Mazen launched his campaign for Massachusetts’ 3rd Congressional District seat. A telling indicator of his more radical views is the fact that Mazen opposed President Obama’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program and criticized moderate Muslim groups as promoters of “imperialistic-style” initiatives to “foist secular attitudes on Muslims.”
Another political race worth watching involves a CAIR official running for the Des Moines, Iowa, city council. Somali Muslim refugee and president of CAIR Iowa, Abshir Omar, is running as a Democratic Socialist to represent downtown Des Moines and the city’s southwest side. City council members can wield significant power and influence over all aspects of community life. Typically, they make key appointments such as city managers, police and fire department heads, library board members, parks and recreation supervisors, transportation directors, as well as administrators for arts councils, housing authorities and planning commissions.
Meanwhile, the background of Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, another Islamist operative who intends to run for governor of Massachusetts in the future, should cause grave concern. Wadud, who served on the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women, has extensive radical Islamic ties. She served as an executive board member for CAIR Massachusetts and as the general counsel for Jamaat ul-Fuqra a.k.a. Muslims of America, a group alleged to have close ties to Al Qaeda.
Jamaat ul-Fuqra was founded in 1980 by Pakistani Sheikh Gilani, who was associated with shoe bomber Richard Reid and implicated in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl. According to the Clarion Project, Wadud posted an anti-Semitic article by Gilani on her Facebook that claimed Jewish complicity in the 9/11 and Pearl Harbor attacks.
Jamaat ul-Fuqra has done more than simply issue social media propaganda, however. The terrorist entity has approximately two dozen paramilitary training centers across the U.S. and its members participated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It is known to proselytize and recruit black prison inmates and reportedly seeks “to purify Islam through violence.” The Center for Policing Terrorism maintains that Jamaat ul-Fuqra “may be the best positioned group to launch an attack on the United States, or, more likely, help al-Qaeda to do so.”
Another Muslim with terrorist ties is a political candidate in Arizona. Southern Baptist convert to Islam, Deedra Abboud, a Phoenix attorney and community activist who served as the executive director of CAIR Arizona and is currently associated with the Muslim American Society, is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator in her state. Abboud opposes President Trump’s policy to temporarily ban refugees from designated Muslim countries rife with terrorist activity. She also opposed the U.S. cruise missile bombing that followed Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons on Syrian civilians. Identifying as a feminist, Abboud defends her husband’s right under Islam to have four wives although she admits that she wouldn’t be happy with it. She helped raise bail money for deceased Muslim terrorist, Elton Simpson, when he was convicted of lying to the FBI about his plans to engage in Islamic terrorist activities in Somalia. Simpson, in the first ISIS-claimed attack on U.S. soil, tried to kill participants at the Mohammed cartoon contest in Garland, Texas in 2015. In 2009, Abboud made a statement about the acceptability of police learning Arabic to better understand the Muslim community. However, she objected to the study of Arabic as a law enforcement tool for investigating potential Islamic terrorist activity deeming it targeting.
Self-described devout Muslim and son of Egyptian immigrant parents, Abdul El-Sayed, has substantial connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and is running for governor of Michigan. A medical doctor who served as the executive director of the Detroit Health Department at age 30, his background includes serving as vice president of his MSA chapter at the University of Michigan during his college years. His wife, Sarah Jukaku, who is described as “a mental health doctor,” wears a hijab. His father-in-law is a former president and current board member of CAIR Michigan.
Quite troubling is the fact that El-Sayed is endorsed by Linda Sarsour, an advocate for the Hamas initiative for the boycott, divestment, and sanctioning of Israel and an activist who played a major role in pressuring the NYPD to discontinue its surveillance of mosques and Muslim organizations post-9/11. That surveillance effort had yielded critical intelligence about terrorist activities. Sarsour is one of El-Sayed’s biggest supporters and is reportedly helping fundraise for El-Sayed’s gubernatorial campaign. She is also a close friend of the Muslim Brotherhood-connected Huma Abedin, has family members who have been arrested for aiding and abetting Hamas, openly supports shariah law and has been a featured speaker at Muslim Brotherhood groups that were designated as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial.
All of the above demonstrate that the Muslim Brotherhood is increasing its political clout in America. As more of its candidates are elected to office, deeper penetration of American society comes within their grasp. Their stated goal to destroy our society from within and replace the Constitution with the tenets of shariah could become a reality. Their adeptness at appealing to the American public by using the coded language of multiculturalism and by professing a moderate Islam has proved to be an unfortunate asset. In the words of former FBI analyst and expert on the Muslim Brotherhood, John Guandolo, who has closely studied their deceptive language and appearance, Muslim Brotherhood operatives are “suit-wearing jihadis who pretend they’re friendly but they’re not.” America should be alert and aware.

In 2008, during the largest terrorism funding trial in U.S. history, United States v. Holy Land Foundation, a document published in 1991 outlined Muslim plans to take over America.  An Explanatory Memorandum:  On the General Strategic Goal for the Group, seized in a 2004 FBI raid of the Virginia home of a Muslim Brotherhood operative, was presented during the trial as evidence of “a Civilization-Jihadist Process.” It outlined the Muslim Brotherhood goal to conduct a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated.”
For several decades, this well-organized and well-funded effort to subvert our constitutional republic and replace it with an Islamic government under Islamic law has focused on infiltrating all levels and branches of the U.S. government. More recently, the Muslim Brotherhood presence within the American political landscape has intensified, accelerated, and become more visible with the establishment of several nonprofit political action organizations. The Muslim Brotherhood stated goal of transforming American society from within in preparation for an eventual takeover is clearly moving forward fueled by the efforts of these groups and their burgeoning success within the umma or Muslim community.
As early as 1987, a declassified FBI confidential informant document described the Muslim Brotherhood as “political action front groups with no traceable ties to Muslim groups” that are organizing external political support to influence both public opinion in America and the U.S. government and its leadership. The informant who disclosed this information told authorities that the MB acknowledged the need to “peacefully get inside the United States Government” for the purpose of meeting “the ultimate goal of overthrowing all non-Islamic governments.”
In 2010, one such “peaceful” group, Project Mobilize, was created by M. Yasser Tabbara to empower and engage the political potential of the Muslim community.  Its mission statement called for the exploitation of the growing political capital of the umma, the promotion of issues important to Muslim Americans and the development of strategies for political advocacy on their behalf.  In 2011, Project Mobilize began fielding its first Muslim candidates for political office.
Project Mobilize’s founder, Tabbara, is a former executive director the Chicago chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate and unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial. Other board members include Safaa Zarzour, the secretary general of another unindicted co-conspirator and Muslim Brotherhood front, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and Oussama Jammal, vice president of the Mosque Foundation, a known center for terrorism fundraising and haven for Hamas operatives.
In 2014, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., representatives from eight Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups announced formation of the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), a political party for Muslims and the first religion-based political party in U.S. history. At the meeting, the founders disclosed their plans to expand Muslim participation in the American political process by encouraging more Muslims to vote, work on political campaigns and run for office themselves.
Oussama Jammal, who was involved in fundraising for convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian and serves as director of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliate, the Muslim American Society (MAS), headed the new organization. MAS, created in the early 1990s, was itself begun as the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and was designated a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates. Mazen Mokhtar, another USCMO founding member, also had MAS ties, having served as its executive director. An Egyptian-born imam, Mokhtar served as webmaster for a site that solicited funds for Taliban and Chechen jihadists. In 2007, he was indicted by then-New Jersey Attorney General Chris Christie for tax evasion and filing false tax returns.
In 2015, a new organization, Jetpac Inc. (Justice, Education and Technology Policy Advocacy Center) was begun by Nadeem Mazen, Massachusett’s first Muslim city council member. Jetpac was established as an “open call for American Muslims to immerse themselves in local politics.” The group trains American Muslim community leaders and educates them about the political process. According to their website, they have prepared more than 15 aspiring candidates for office in Maine, New York, Rhode Island, and California. The group’s activities include development of proprietary software for social media outreach, fundraising and canvassing techniques, media communication and campaign strategy skills as well as advice on combatting negative impressions of Muslims. In addition, Jetpac teaches a course on U.S. government and politics at a Massachusetts Islamic school that focuses on grassroots organizing and the history of the civil rights movement.
Following his stint as a Cambridge City Council member, Mazen, a founding member of CAIR Massachusetts and former president of MIT’s MSA, announced plans to run for Congress as the third elected Muslim after Keith Hakim Ellison (D-MN) and Andre Carson (D-IN). Just this week, Mazen launched his campaign for Massachusetts’ 3rd Congressional District seat. A telling indicator of his more radical views is the fact that Mazen opposed President Obama’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program and criticized moderate Muslim groups as promoters of “imperialistic-style” initiatives to “foist secular attitudes on Muslims.”
Another political race worth watching involves a CAIR official running for the Des Moines, Iowa, city council. Somali Muslim refugee and president of CAIR Iowa, Abshir Omar, is running as a Democratic Socialist to represent downtown Des Moines and the city’s southwest side. City council members can wield significant power and influence over all aspects of community life. Typically, they make key appointments such as city managers, police and fire department heads, library board members, parks and recreation supervisors, transportation directors, as well as administrators for arts councils, housing authorities and planning commissions.
Meanwhile, the background of Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, another Islamist operative who intends to run for governor of Massachusetts in the future, should cause grave concern. Wadud, who served on the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women, has extensive radical Islamic ties. She served as an executive board member for CAIR Massachusetts and as the general counsel for Jamaat ul-Fuqra a.k.a. Muslims of America, a group alleged to have close ties to Al Qaeda.
Jamaat ul-Fuqra was founded in 1980 by Pakistani Sheikh Gilani, who was associated with shoe bomber Richard Reid and implicated in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl. According to the Clarion Project, Wadud posted an anti-Semitic article by Gilani on her Facebook that claimed Jewish complicity in the 9/11 and Pearl Harbor attacks.
Jamaat ul-Fuqra has done more than simply issue social media propaganda, however. The terrorist entity has approximately two dozen paramilitary training centers across the U.S. and its members participated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It is known to proselytize and recruit black prison inmates and reportedly seeks “to purify Islam through violence.” The Center for Policing Terrorism maintains that Jamaat ul-Fuqra “may be the best positioned group to launch an attack on the United States, or, more likely, help al-Qaeda to do so.”
Another Muslim with terrorist ties is a political candidate in Arizona. Southern Baptist convert to Islam, Deedra Abboud, a Phoenix attorney and community activist who served as the executive director of CAIR Arizona and is currently associated with the Muslim American Society, is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator in her state. Abboud opposes President Trump’s policy to temporarily ban refugees from designated Muslim countries rife with terrorist activity. She also opposed the U.S. cruise missile bombing that followed Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons on Syrian civilians. Identifying as a feminist, Abboud defends her husband’s right under Islam to have four wives although she admits that she wouldn’t be happy with it. She helped raise bail money for deceased Muslim terrorist, Elton Simpson, when he was convicted of lying to the FBI about his plans to engage in Islamic terrorist activities in Somalia. Simpson, in the first ISIS-claimed attack on U.S. soil, tried to kill participants at the Mohammed cartoon contest in Garland, Texas in 2015. In 2009, Abboud made a statement about the acceptability of police learning Arabic to better understand the Muslim community. However, she objected to the study of Arabic as a law enforcement tool for investigating potential Islamic terrorist activity deeming it targeting.
Self-described devout Muslim and son of Egyptian immigrant parents, Abdul El-Sayed, has substantial connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and is running for governor of Michigan. A medical doctor who served as the executive director of the Detroit Health Department at age 30, his background includes serving as vice president of his MSA chapter at the University of Michigan during his college years. His wife, Sarah Jukaku, who is described as “a mental health doctor,” wears a hijab. His father-in-law is a former president and current board member of CAIR Michigan.
Quite troubling is the fact that El-Sayed is endorsed by Linda Sarsour, an advocate for the Hamas initiative for the boycott, divestment, and sanctioning of Israel and an activist who played a major role in pressuring the NYPD to discontinue its surveillance of mosques and Muslim organizations post-9/11. That surveillance effort had yielded critical intelligence about terrorist activities. Sarsour is one of El-Sayed’s biggest supporters and is reportedly helping fundraise for El-Sayed’s gubernatorial campaign. She is also a close friend of the Muslim Brotherhood-connected Huma Abedin, has family members who have been arrested for aiding and abetting Hamas, openly supports shariah law and has been a featured speaker at Muslim Brotherhood groups that were designated as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial.
All of the above demonstrate that the Muslim Brotherhood is increasing its political clout in America. As more of its candidates are elected to office, deeper penetration of American society comes within their grasp. Their stated goal to destroy our society from within and replace the Constitution with the tenets of shariah could become a reality. Their adeptness at appealing to the American public by using the coded language of multiculturalism and by professing a moderate Islam has proved to be an unfortunate asset. In the words of former FBI analyst and expert on the Muslim Brotherhood, John Guandolo, who has closely studied their deceptive language and appearance, Muslim Brotherhood operatives are “suit-wearing jihadis who pretend they’re friendly but they’re not.” America should be alert and aware.

THE police officers who first stormed the hotel room where Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock carried out America’s biggest massacre in history have broken their silence.

No sign of motive in sea of tips

Authorities have no credible information about Paddock’s motive despite more than 1,000 leads and tips, Undersheriff Kevin C. McMahill said at a news conference Friday.
In the news briefing and an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, McMahill released more details about the shooting and investigation Friday, including:
• A Mandalay Bay security guard who authorities believe drew Paddock’s attention toward the hallway outside his hotel suite went to that floor to respond to an alarm due to an open door near Paddock’s room. The guard, Jesus Campos, was shot in the leg while checking on the alarm. According to a police-reported timeline, Paddock never fired on the crowd below again after that.

• The alarm from a room “a number of doors down” from Paddock’s likely was a coincidence. The door was not forced open, had been open for a while and Paddock didn’t have the keys to that room. McMahill said that door either had been left open or didn’t shut completely.
• Investigators looking into Sunday’s massacre have found no known nexus to terrorism or connections to ISIS.
• Authorities are confident there was not another shooter in Paddock’s room but are still trying to determine whether anyone else knew of his plans.

• Authorities do not believe another person used Paddock’s room key at the Mandalay Bay hotel.
• Investigators have reviewed “voluminous amounts of video” from different locations, including Mandalay Bay, and have not seen any other person they think at this point is another suspect.
• Asked about video on which Paddock might have discussed motive, McMahill said: “I am not aware that we have recovered any such video.”
• Police don’t know what the killer was going to do with 50 pounds of explosives found in his car.
• Paddock brought the 23 guns and ammunition he had in his hotel suite over the course of several days, the undersheriff told CNN.
• Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, continues to cooperate with investigators, her lawyer and McMahill each said Friday. Attorney Matthew Lombard said Danley wouldn’t be making any more public statements in the near future.

Pence honors massacre victims

Vice President Mike Pence offered prayers and words of comfort for Las Vegas on Saturday, as he and his wife participated in a citywide “unity prayer walk” in honor of the shooting victims.
“We are with you today. Today we are all Vegas strong,” Pence told participants gathered at City Hall. “President Trump personally asked us to be here to stand with you, to pray with you, for strength, comfort and healing.”
The President visited Las Vegas on Wednesday. Like Trump, Pence praised first responders, saying, “Their actions undoubtedly saved lives that night.”
“We find hope in the heroic actions in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the fire department and all the first responders on that night who, without regard for their personal safety, rushed into harm’s way,” Pence said.
The vice president called the shooting “a tragedy of unimaginable proportions” and said, “Las Vegas came face to face with pure evil” that night.

Request to seize shooter’s assets

The family of one of the concertgoers killed last weekend is asking a Nevada court to appoint a special administrator to take control of the shooter’s assets.

Attorneys for Phippen’s family filed the petition Friday in District Court in Clark County. The petition asks a judge to appoint the county’s public administrator to account for and control Paddock’s estate — in part to make it available for any future lawsuits filed by the shooting victims.

The court “will notify (Paddock’s) family members, and we’ll see where this goes,” said Richard A. Patterson, a California attorney representing Phippen’s son Travis.
“We want (Paddock’s estate) administered by the court. I don’t think we’re at the bottom of (Paddock’s assets),” Patterson said.
“We want someone to oversee the assets so it stays the way it is,” said Nevada-based probate attorney Richard Chatwin, who is working with Patterson on the petition.

Source: Shooter tried to buy tracer rounds

Paddock tried to buy tracer ammunition at a gun show in the Phoenix area in recent weeks, a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation told CNN.

Paddock bought other ammunition at the show, but he couldn’t obtain the tracer ammunition — bullets with a pyrotechnic charge that, when the round is fired, leaves an illuminated trace of its path — because the vendor didn’t have any to sell, the official said.
Paddock did not use tracer bullets when he fired into the festival crowd hundreds of yards away.
The official explained that if Paddock had tracer ammunition, he could have had a more precise idea of where his shots were going in the darkness, and could have been more accurate.
Shooters wanting greater accuracy often mix tracer rounds with non-tracers — perhaps having one tracer every fifth round in a magazine, said Art Roderick, a CNN law enforcement analyst.
“It allows you to keep your weapon on not necessarily a specific target, but a specific area. … There would have been a lot higher casualty rate if he had tracer rounds,” said Roderick, a former assistant director of the US Marshals Service.

But tracer rounds also could have allowed police to see Paddock’s location more quickly, CNN law enforcement analyst James Gagliano said.
Without the tracer ammunition, Paddock’s location was difficult to determine from the outside, said Gagliano, a retired FBI supervisory special agent.
“The barrel of the rifle — we could not see muzzle flashes, from the angles I’ve seen on videos, which meant that he was … pulled back inside,” Gagliano said.
A source close to the investigation told CNN on Friday that authorities think Paddock might have fired at massive jet fuel tanks at McCarran International Airport near his hotel before shooting at the concert crowd.

Did Paddock want to escape?

Six days after the mass shooting, authorities are trying to determine the motivation of the retired accountant, who had no criminal record and did not raise any flags while accumulating his arsenal of weapons.

In addition to the weapons in his hotel suite, Paddock had more than 50 pounds of exploding targets and 1,600 rounds of ammunition in his car in the hotel parking lot, police said, fueling suspicion he intended to survive the massacre.
McMahill said Friday there was no evidence that Paddock intended to use the target material for a homemade bomb.
Escape, in this case, might have meant using the equipment in the car for further assaults until he got caught, said John Sheahan, a former Las Vegas SWAT team member.
“There’s one of three ways it’s going to end for an active shooter, and they pretty much all know this. You’re either going to commit suicide; you’re going to … shoot it out with (police) and you’re going to be killed, or you’re going to continue on a preplanned rampage at locations B, C, D and E until the police finally stop you,” Sheahan said.

“He rented the room in his own name. He’s already on video coming in and out. We know who he is. He’s going to be the most wanted man in the world if he does try to leave here,” he added.

(LAS VEGAS) — Tourists coming to gamble and party on the Strip will soon find something other than bright lights welcoming them to “Fabulous Las Vegas.”
Billboards will serve as a stark reminder that investigators remain stumped about what drove a gunman to mow down concertgoers from a perch in a high-rise casino hotel last Sunday.
“We still do not have a clear motive or reason why,” a frustrated Clark County Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said Friday. “We have looked at literally everything.”
Investigators have chased 1,000 leads and examined Stephen Paddock’s politics, his finances, any possible radicalization and his social behavior — typical investigative avenues that have helped uncover the motive in past shootings.
“We have been down each and every one of these paths,” McMahill said. “We all want answers.”
The FBI announced that billboards would go up around the city asking anyone with information to dial 800-CALL-FBI.
“If you know something, say something,” said Aaron Rouse, agent in charge of the Las Vegas FBI office. “We will not stop until we have the truth.”
Paddock, a reclusive 64-year-old high-stakes gambler, rained bullets on the crowd at a country music festival from his 32nd-floor hotel suite, killing 58 and wounding hundreds before taking his own life.
McMahill said investigators had reviewed voluminous video from the casino and don’t think Paddock had an accomplice in the shooting, but they want to know if anyone knew about his plot beforehand.
In their effort to find any hint of his motive, investigators were looking into whether he was with a prostitute days before the shooting, were scrutinizing cruises he took and were trying to make sense of a cryptic note with numbers jotted on it found in his hotel room, a federal official said.
The U.S. official briefed by federal law enforcement officers wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The official said investigators were interviewing other call girls for information and looking into at least a dozen cruises Paddock took in the last few years, including one to the Middle East.
It is unusual to have so few clues five days after a mass shooting. McMahill noted that in past mass killings or terrorist attacks, killers left notes, social media postings and information on a computer, or even phoned police.
“The lack of a social media footprint is likely intentional,” said Erroll Southers, director of homegrown violent extremism studies at the University of Southern California. “We’re so used to, in the first 24 to 48 hours, being able to review social media posts. If they don’t leave us a note behind or a manifesto behind, and we’re not seeing that, that’s what’s making this longer.”
What officers have found is that Paddock planned his attack meticulously.
He requested an upper-floor room overlooking the festival, stockpiled 23 guns, a dozen of them modified to fire continuously like an automatic weapon, and set up cameras inside and outside his room to watch for approaching officers.
In a possible sign he was contemplating massacres at other sites, he also booked rooms overlooking the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago in August and the Life Is Beautiful show near the Vegas Strip in late September, according to authorities reconstructing his movements leading up to the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
His arsenal also included tracer rounds that can improve a shooter’s firing accuracy in the dark, a law enforcement official told the AP. It wasn’t clear whether Paddock fired any of the illuminated bullets during the massacre.
Paddock bought 1,000 rounds of the .308-caliber and .223-caliber tracer ammunition from a private buyer he met at a Phoenix gun show, a law enforcement official not authorized to comment on the investigation said on condition of anonymity.
Tracer rounds illuminate their path so a gunman can home in on targets at night. But they can also give away the shooter’s position.
Video shot of the pandemonium that erupted when Paddock started strafing the festival showed a muzzle flash from his room at the Mandalay Bay resort, but bullets weren’t visible in the night sky.
McMahill said investigators are looking into Paddock’s mental health and any medications he was on.
His girlfriend, Marilou Danley, told FBI agents Wednesday that she had not noticed any changes in his mental state or seen indications he could become violent, according to a federal official who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Danley said she was unaware of any plans Paddock had when he sent her overseas to see family in her native Philippines. She was out of the country at the time of the attacks and has been labeled a “person of interest,” though she’s not in custody and is cooperating with authorities.
Because so few people knew Paddock well, investigators will have a harder time probing his background for clues or hints he may have dropped about his plans, Southers said.
There’s “no one to say who’s he mad at, what his motive is,” Southers said. “The key to this case right now is the girlfriend.”

When it came to guns, Mr. Michel said, “he was not a novice.”
The son of a bank robber and a secretary, Mr. Paddock grew up lower middle class in Southern California in the 1960s. From an early age, he focused on gaining complete control over his life and not having to rely on anyone. He cycled through a series of jobs he thought would make him rich, Eric Paddock said.
“He went to work for the I.R.S. because he thought that’s where the money was, but it turned out the money wasn’t there,” the younger Mr. Paddock said. “He went to the aerospace industry but the money wasn’t there either. He went to real estate and that’s where the money was.”
Stephen Paddock began buying and refurbishing properties in economically depressed areas around Los Angeles, teaching himself how to put in plumbing and install air-conditioning. By the late 1980s, “we had cash flow,” said Eric Paddock, who added that he had given his life savings to his older brother to invest and eventually became a partner in his company, because “that’s the kind of guy he was. I knew he would succeed.”
“He helped make my mother and I affluent enough to be retired in comfort,” he said.
With success came a rigidity and uncompromising attitude, along with two failed marriages, both short and childless. Stephen Paddock started gambling. Some who met him described him as arrogant, with a strong sense of superiority. People in his life bent to his will, even his mother and brother. He went out of his way for no one.
“He acted like everybody worked for him and that he was above others,” said John Weinreich, 48, a former executive casino host at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, where he saw Mr. Paddock frequently from 2012 to 2014. When Mr. Paddock wanted food while he was gambling, he wanted it immediately and would order with more than one server if the meal did not arrive quickly enough.
Mr. Weinreich said he would get irritated and “uppity about it.”
Mr. Paddock was uncompromising but he was also smart.
“I would liken him to a chess player: very analytical and a numbers guy,” Mr. Weinreich said. “He seemed to be working at a higher level mentally than most people I run into in gambling.”
Mr. Paddock cherished his solitude, his brother said. In 2003, he got his pilot’s license after training in the Los Angeles area, eventually taking the extra step to get an instrument rating so that he could legally fly in cloudy conditions with limited visibility. He bought cookie-cutter houses in Texas and Nevada towns with small airports so that he could park his planes. He was utterly unremarkable.
“This guy paid on time every time and did not cause any problems at any time,” said Lt. Brian Parrish, the spokesman for the Police Department in Mesquite, Tex., where he rented a hangar for $285 a month from 2007 through 2009. He also stored planes at the small airport in Henderson, Nev., from 2002 to 2010, an airport spokesman said, though it is not clear he ever lived at the local addresses to which they had been registered.
Even in death, Mr. Paddock seemed to stay true to his ways. He remained in control, answerable to no one but himself. He was ensconced in a carpeted hotel suite. He was wearing gloves, as he often did to protect his sensitive skin. He shot himself before the police broke into his room. A piece of paper with numbers written on it lay on a table near his body.
“If Steve decided it was time for Steve to go, Steve got up and left,” Eric Paddock said. “He did what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.”

The ‘Most Boring’ Son

Mr. Paddock was the oldest, and least angry, of four boys growing up in the 1950s, said another brother, Patrick Benjamin Paddock II, 60, an engineer in Tucson. Stephen Paddock was born in Iowa, the home state of their mother, Irene Hudson.
“My brother was the most boring one in the family,” Patrick Paddock said. “He was the least violent one in the family, over a 30-year history, so it’s like, who?”
Their father, Patrick Benjamin Paddock, also known as Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, was mostly absent, living a life of crime even before the boys were born. A 1969 newspaper story described him as a “glib, smooth talking ‘confidence man,’ who is egotistic and arrogant.”
His rap sheet was long and included writing bad checks, stealing cars and robbing banks. He was on the F.B.I.’s most wanted list. The agency described him as an avid bridge player, standing 6-foot-4 and weighing 245 pounds, who “has been diagnosed as being psychopathic, with possible suicidal tendencies.”
Stephen Paddock learned resourcefulness and self-reliance from an early age. In 1960, when he was 7, his father went to prison for a series of bank robberies and the family moved to Southern California.
The boys’ mother raised them alone on a secretary’s salary, the younger Patrick Paddock said. The brothers would fight over who would get the whole milk. Powdered milk, less tasty but cheaper, was the norm. Their mother never explained where their father was.
“She kept that secret from the family,” Patrick Paddock said.
Stephen Paddock graduated from John H. Francis Polytechnic Senior High School in the Sun Valley neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1971, according to a Los Angeles Unified School District official. Richard Alarcon, a former Los Angeles city councilman, who lived near the Paddocks, said their neighborhood was working class, with a Japanese community center and tidy ranch houses bought with money from the G.I. Bill.
Mr. Alarcon took a science class with Mr. Paddock and remembered him as smart but with “a kind of irreverence. He didn’t always stay between the lines.”
He recalled a competition to build a bridge of balsa wood, without staples or glue. Mr. Paddock cheated, he said, using glue and extra wood.
“Everybody could see that he had cheated, but he just sort of laughed it off,” Mr. Alarcon said. “He had that funny quirky smile on his face like he didn’t care. He wanted to have the strongest bridge and he didn’t care what it took.”

A Knack for Making Money

Mr. Paddock spent his 20s and 30s trying to escape the unpredictability of poverty. He worked nights at an airport while going to the California State University, Northridge, his brother Eric said, and then at jobs with the Internal Revenue Service and as an auditor of defense contracts. But it was real estate that ultimately lifted Mr. Paddock to financial freedom.
In 1987, he bought a 30-unit building at 1256 W. 29th Street in Los Angeles, near the University of Southern California, according to property records. His brother Eric Paddock said the buildings they bought were not “Taj Mahals, but they were nice safe places.”
Crucially, they were excellent investments: Stephen Paddock more than doubled his money on his California holdings, which included at least six multifamily residences, according to property records. He made money in Texas, too. In 2012, he sold a 110-unit building in Mesquite, outside Dallas, for $8.3 million.
He was a good landlord. He kept the rents low, responded promptly to his tenants’ complaints, learned all their names and made sure they were happy. When one reliable tenant complained about a rent increase, he took half off the difference. He designed the ownership structure so his family would profit and installed his mother in a tidy house just behind the apartment complex in Mesquite, Tex.
Mr. Paddock had an apartment in the complex, but he mostly lived elsewhere. He had been married twice, but the apartment looked like a bachelor pad, said Todd Franks, a real estate broker with SVN Investment Sales Group in Dallas. “What you would expect from a 25-year-old single guy.”
To Mr. Franks, Mr. Paddock stood out because it was unusual for the landlord of a property that size to pay such close attention to the day-to-day running of his complex.
“He was frustrated by people who did stupid things,” Mr. Franks said.
He was also willing to fight to defend what was his. During the riots in Los Angeles in the 1990s, he went to the roof of an apartment complex he owned in a flak jacket and armed with a gun, waiting for the rioters, Mr. Franks said.
Though Mr. Paddock might have adopted an accommodating attitude toward his tenants and dressed casually — Mr. Franks remembered him regularly wearing sandals and a sweatsuit — Mr. Paddock was focused and astute when he made deals.
“He was a tough negotiator,” Mr. Franks said. “He wanted his price. His terms. He was a very savvy businessman.”

The House Advantage

By the 2000s, with both of his marriages long over, casinos became Mr. Paddock’s habitat. He liked being waited on, seeing shows and eating good food.
“He likes it when people go, ‘Oh, Mr. Paddock, can I get you a big bowl of the best shrimp anybody had ever eaten on the planet and a big glass of our best port?” Eric Paddock said.
Gambling made him feel important, if not social.
“You could tell that being in that high-limit gambling environment would lift him up,’’ said Mr. Weinreich, the Atlantis casino host in Reno. “He liked everyone doting on him.”
He sometimes called for company, inviting his brother Eric and his children for a free weekend in a luxury suite. But mostly he stayed alone.
A couple of years ago, Mr. Paddock stayed in one Las Vegas hotel gambling for four months straight, said a gaming industry analyst here who was briefed on Mr. Paddock’s gambling history.
The analyst described him as a midlevel high roller, capable of losing $100,000 in one session, which could extend over several days. He said Mr. Paddock may have lost that amount at the Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas within the last few months.
Playing a slot machine can be mindless and is usually a guaranteed win for the casino. That is not what Mr. Paddock played. His game, video poker, requires some skill. Players have to know the history of a particular machine. They can do that by reading a pay table, which tells them what each possible winning hand pays out.
One of the ways that video poker players get an advantage is to play casino promotions, which essentially pay out bonuses to winners, said Richard Munchkin, author of “Gambling Wizards: Conversations With the World’s Greatest Gamblers.” A gambler like Mr. Paddock will often “lock” a machine, meaning he or she monopolizes it and makes sure no one else uses it during a gambling session.
For one casino promotion, Mr. Paddock showed up two hours early, locked two machines and played them for 14 hours straight, Mr. Munchkin said, based on information he had compiled from other gamblers who were there at the time. The promotion lasted 12 hours, he said, “but he wanted to play for two hours before anybody got those machines. He knew they were the best machines based on pay tables.”
Mr. Paddock “knew the house advantage down to a tenth of a percent,” he said.
As for the mystery of why Mr. Paddock would go on a shooting rampage at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino and then kill himself, most in the gambling industry do not believe it had anything to do with money.
He was in good standing with MGM Properties, the owner of the Mandalay and the Bellagio, according to a person familiar with his gambling history. He had a $100,000 credit limit, the person said, but never used the full amount.

The Absent Neighbor

Mr. Paddock spent so much time in casinos that he was mostly a ghost in the neighborhoods where he had homes.
Colleen Maas, a neighbor of Mr. Paddock’s in Reno, said she had not seen him once in a year and a half, despite walking her dog three times a day and going to line dancing events with his girlfriend, Ms. Danley, at the community center.
He did travel. On his 60th birthday, April 9, 2013, he flew to the Philippines on Japan Airlines and stayed for five days, according to a spokeswoman for the Philippine Bureau of Immigration. The family of Ms. Danley, his girlfriend, lived there and she was visiting the country at the time. The couple went again for his birthday the following year.
When he did appear at his Reno home, he could be curt. Another neighbor, John McKay, recalled a day when he was hanging Christmas lights on a railing in his front yard when Mr. Paddock walked by. Mr. McKay said hello and yelled out, “Merry Christmas!” Mr. Paddock kept walking. “He said nothing,” Mr. McKay said. “Not a word. No eye contact.”
Even more baffling, when Mr. McKay tried to strike up a conversation with Mr. Paddock about Donald Trump during the election campaign, he got no response.
“Almost everyone has a reaction to Trump,” said Mr. McKay’s wife, Darlene.
Ms. McKay said that she would usually get up early each morning to watch the sunrise and, when Mr. Paddock was at his home, she would see him dressed in his gym clothes walking to the community center for a workout. Ms. McKay recalled something peculiar: “He always walked across the street and would never pass in front of our house.”
Mr. McKay said that he rarely saw a window or a door open at the house. One day he saw Mr. Paddock’s garage door open, and noticed a large safe inside.
It is not clear what set Mr. Paddock on his path to destruction. As early as 2010, he could no longer fly his planes. His medical certificate expired, according to Federal Aviation Administration records, and there are no indications that he renewed it.
Mr. Paddock bought his last house in Mesquite, Nev., a retirement community of 18,000 people about 90 minutes from Las Vegas that attracts golfers and gamblers from around the country. He seems to have paid in cash, according to property records, and, as he did with other houses, spent very little time there.
His neighbors added personal touches to their yards — decorative pots, plants of all colors and sizes. Mr. Paddock’s house was unadorned. One of the few things neighbors remembered about him was the solid-panel fence he erected. The message was clear: Mr. Paddock was a man who did not want to be seen. On Thursday, investigators had left. A tiny paint-splattered easel, its brush drawer open and empty, stood in the back yard.
Ms. Danley worked in Mesquite. She took a job booking sports bets at a local casino called the Virgin River, where gamblers sat together in rows watching horse races and waitresses circled in tight black skirts.
Several days a week, she attended morning mass at a local Catholic church, said Leo McGinty, 80, a fellow parishioner who knew her from the casino.
Ms. Danley dressed smartly and modestly, he said. She usually sat alone.
Continue reading the main story

Robert Mueller. Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s lawyers have adopted a new legal strategy of cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller in the hopes that he will do the one thing former FBI director James Comey did not: confirm publicly that Trump is not being investigated as part of the FBI’s Russia probe, according to The New York Times.
Mueller was appointed special counsel after Trump fired Comey in May. Initially, the White House saidTrump’s dismissal of Comey was based entirely on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s recommendation and because of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
Shortly after, however, Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt that “this Russia thing” had been a factor in his decision, and that he was going to fire Comey regardless of Rosenstein’s recommendation.
Comey also told the Senate Intelligence Committee in June that before firing him, Trump had asked him to shut down the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which included examining whether the Trump campaign had colluded with Moscow to tilt the election in his favor.
Though Comey privately told Trump that he was not under investigation, he did not do so publicly in case he had to amend or retract his statement down the road, and it’s likely Mueller will make the same call because of that reason.
Mueller is reportedly investigating Trump for obstruction of justice based on his decision to fire Comey. The special counsel is also examining Trump’s role in crafting a misleading statement his son, Donald Trump Jr., issued in response to reports that he met with a Russian lawyer offering damaging information on Hillary Clinton last June.
Trump’s advisers reportedly urged more transparency in the initial statement, but he overruled them and the statement had to be amended several times as new details about the meeting emerged.
Trump’s legal team at first contemplated undertaking an aggressive strategy meant to discredit Mueller and the Russia investigation, but they reportedly switched gears after white-collar criminal defense attorney Ty Cobb took over the White House’s response to the probe.
Cobb has reportedly advocated being as cooperative and responsive as possible to the special counsel’s requests in an effort to speed up the investigation and prove Trump’s innocence.
White House counsel Don McGahn, on the other hand, has resisted being too forthcoming because he thinks Trump will be able to assert executive privilege over many of their interactions.
But it appears that the White House is leaning towards Cobb’s strategy — The Times reported that officials are “strongly considering” allowing McGahn to speak to Mueller’s team about his private conversations with Trump.
McGahn is one of several West Wing staffers the special counsel wants to interview, presumably because he was witness to certain critical events that are of importance in the investigation, including the circumstances surrounding Comey’s firing, as well as those surrounding the resignation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who is also a key subject in the investigation.

Good Saturday morning. One year ago today — Oct. 7, 2016 — brought one of the tectonic news collisions in the history of elections … 3 p.m.: White House releases intelligence community statementsaying Russians are behind election hacking … 4:02 p.m.: WashPost reveals “Access Hollywood” tape … 4:30 p.m.: John Podesta emails posted by Wikileaks. Relive it if you dare.