Gorka Says Mosque Attack Could Have Been False Flag
Muslim leaders have condemned a White House official who said that a suspected terror attack on a Minnesota mosque may have been a false flag attack carried out by leftists.
Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, said in an appearance on MSNBC Tuesday that the White House would not be commenting on the incident until it has "some kind of finalized investigation.”
Trump has been criticized for not issuing a statement on the attack, which has been described as "a criminal act of terrorism" by Minnesota governor Mark Dayton, and is being investigated by the FBI.
He said the White House would “wait and see” if the blast turned out to be a fake attack.
Asad Zaman, the director of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, slammed Gorka's remarks.
"I find this comment outrageous and offensive. Waiting for an investigation to be complete has not been something Trump has done when the perpetrators have been Muslim. This hypocrisy must be called out. What prevents the president from expressing sympathy for members of the house of worship that was attacked?" he told Buzzfeed News.
Ibrahim Hooper, the national communications director for the Council on American Islamic Relations told Politico: "[Trump] really needs to speak out against these type of things, because those who support him take his silence as tacit support,”
An explosion went off Saturday morning in the Dar Al Farooq Islamic Center in a Minneapolis suburb as worshippers were arriving for prayer. No-one was injured in the blast, which heavily damaged the imam’s office and shattered windows.
"When we have some kind of finalized investigation, absolutely—so, you know, there's a great rule, all initial reports are false, you have to check them and you have to find out who the perpetrators are," Gorka said in response to a question about whether the White House will address the bombing.
"We've had a series of crimes committed, alleged hate crimes, by right-wing individuals in the last six months that turned out to actually have been propagated by the left," he said. "So let's wait and see and allow local authorities to provide their assessment. And then the White House will make its comments."
Gorka said there have been “fake hate crimes” so the White House was not responding to the attack.
"The question of who does it is a question. When you've had people fake hate crimes in the last six months with some regularity I think it's wise, don't you, to find out what exactly is going on before you make statements when in fact they could turn out to be not who you are expecting," Gorka said.
He went on to deny the existence of lone wolf terror attacks, committed by extremists independently of any network.
“There’s no such thing as a lone wolf. You do know that. That was a phrase invented by the last administration to make Americans stupid,“ Gorka said.
“There has never been, never been a serious attack .... or a serious plot that was unconnected from ISIS or al Qaeda, at least through the ideology and the TTPs - the tactics, the training, the techniques, and the procedures—that they supply through the internet. Never happened. It’s bogus,” Gorka added.
Experts said that Gorka seemed to have forgotten about the 1995 Oklahoma bombing, carried out by far-right extremist Timothy McVeigh, in which 168 people were killed.
Trump’s refusal to condemn the attack reflects a pattern in which he has failed to or belatedly condemned attacks by white nationalist perpetrators, yet been quick to condemn attacks in which an Islamist appeared responsible.
In January, Trump did not comment on an attack on a mosque in Quebec, Canada which that left six dead. In May, after a white supremacist killed one man and left another critically injured on a Portland train, there was no comment from the president for days, until a statement condemning the incident was released via the official presidential Twitter account, rather than the @RealDonaldTrump Twitter account favored by the president.
The Council for American-Islamic Relations said a recent study showed a 584 percent increase in hate crimes against Muslims from 2014 to 2016, when Trump was elected president.
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