Secrecy and Government Weaponization Behind Distrust Of FBI’s Investigation Into New Year’s Day Killings
Radical transparency by Trump administration is required to regain the public’s trust
Post-traumatic stress disorder from Afghanistan war trauma and resulting unresolved depression appear to have driven a 37-year-old Green Beret named Matthew Livelsberger to kill himself in a Tesla CyberTruck in front of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day. “In 2020, he was having paranoia and nightmares. He was exhausted and depressed,” said Livelsberger’s ex-girlfriend. “He was gaining weight, and he couldn’t think.” Said the FBI special agent in charge, “Although this incident is more public and sensational than usual, it ultimately appears to be a tragic case of suicide involving a heavily decorated combat veteran who is struggling with PTSD and other issues.” Law enforcement says there is evidence he changed his psychiatric medication.
Livelsberger’s actions appear to be part of a larger pattern among US military personnel. The number of former service members who commit extremist crimes has significantly increased in recent years. According to a report obtained by the Intercept, seven individuals with US military backgrounds committed extremist crimes between 1990 and 2010. Since 2011, this figure has risen to nearly 45 per year.
The Las Vegas police on Friday released a manifesto by Livelsberger lamenting America’s cultural decline and urging people to “rally around Trump, Musk, and Kennedy.” In an email to a former Army intelligence officer on December 31, which law enforcement sources say appears authentic, Livelsberger claimed it was the Chinese who were flying drones over the East Coast, and that they used “gravitic propulsion” technology that only the US had previously.
And yet several elements of his case appear to be strange and unresolved. Livelsberger never released the manifesto he allegedly wrote; police and the FBI released it, saying they found it on his phone. The manifesto reads as though it were written by a different person than the email allegedly sent to the Army intelligence officer. “They don't look like the same writer at all,” said former FBI agent turned whistleblower, Kyle Seraphin. “The sentence structure is different, the lexicon, the type of words being used, the formation of thoughts and ideas, the length, the topics — completely different.” The email is focused on blowing the whistle on the military coverup of Chinese drones and war crimes in Afghanistan, while the manifesto is focused on civilizational decline and Ukraine.
And for a guy who claimed to love Musk and Trump so much, blowing up the former’s truck in front of the latter’s hotel seems like an odd way to show it. This is particularly odd given the claim by FBI that Livelsberger shot himself in the head with a powerful Desert Eagle .50 handgun before the CyberTruck detonated. Matt Tardio noted on X that the video of the explosion showed Livelsberger sitting upright and no blood on the window. “Desert Eagle .50 would have been highly destructive and blown out the window,” George Hill, a former FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst (SIA) told Public.