Why Colorado Terror Suspect Says He Waited a Year to Carry Out Attack
Soliman, 45, is accused of injuring eight people by attacking a Jewish community event on Sunday afternoon in Boulder, Colorado, burning his victims, aged 52 to 88, with a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails. Two victims had to be airlifted to hospitals.
The father-of-five, who is an Egyptian national, was slapped with a federal hate crime charge on Monday morning. In an interview with the FBI, he allegedly admitted to the attack and said he would do it all again if he could.
Soliman also told investigators that he 'wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead,' according to a criminal complaint obtained by the Daily Beast.
He added that he targeted Sunday's 'Run For Their Lives' event, which called for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza, because they are a 'Zionist group' that he found through an online search.
'Throughout the interview, Soliman stated that he hated the Zionist group and did this because he hated this group and needed to stop them from taking over 'our land,' which he explained to be Palestine,' the complaint said.
His daughter's graduation is the only thing that kept him from acting sooner, the complaint alleged.
There is no public information about Soliman's family. The right-wing influencer Laura Loomer claimed in a viral post on X that Soliman's daughter plans to attend college in Colorado in the fall. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions from the Daily Beast about Soliman's wife and children, but wrote in an emailed statement that Soliman 'is illegally in our country.'
The Soliman family lived in Colorado Springs, about 100 miles south of where Sunday's attack took place. His neighbors told the local news station KKTV that he worked as an Uber driver and was often out of town.
KKTV also reported that the El Paso County Sheriff's Office received three non-criminal calls for service to Soliman's apartment since 2022, including two 911 hang-ups and another described only as 'juvenile contact.' Soliman was reportedly involved in four traffic stops in that same period.
Soliman's complaint stated that he had left notes for his family on an iPhone that he had hidden in a drawer at their home. That device has been turned over to local cops by his wife.
The White House has characterized Soliman as an illegal migrant who exploited the immigration system when he entered the U.S. in 2022, laying blame for his presence in the country—and his eventual 'antisemitic attack'—on the Biden administration.
Soliman entered the U.S. on a tourist visa that expired in Feb. 2023. He filed for asylum in Sept. 2022, which granted him a temporary work permit that expired in March. DHS did not answer questions about the status of Soliman's asylum case.
Soliman was booked into the county jail on Sunday night on multiple felony counts, including first-degree murder, despite no victims dying. Boulder police released a mugshot on Monday that showed his right ear was bandaged, his face was burned, and he had a bloodied nose. Part of his white shirt was also stained a yellowish color.
Clips from the attack showed Soliman shirtless and saying, 'How many children killed,' possibly referring to civilian casualties in Gaza amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The complaint alleges he was also heard saying, 'end Zionist.'
Soliman's 2015 silver Toyota Prius was found near the scene and impounded, according to his federal complaint. Allegedly inside the vehicle were papers with the words 'Israel,' 'Palestine,' and 'USAID' on them.
Federal prosecutors tacked on a hate crime charge for Soliman after his interview with investigators. If convicted, he could be sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in prison, with the potential for a life sentence.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
26 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Trump administration freezes $339M in UCLA grants and accuses the school of rights violations
The Trump administration paused the research funding as part of an investigation by the government's antisemitism task force, two administration officials said. The freeze included about $240 million in research grants from the Department of Health and Human Services and the NIH, $81 million from the NSF, and $18.2 million from the Energy Department, a White House spokesperson said. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The move makes UCLA the latest university to be targeted by Trump administration officials. It comes amid a broader pushback by the administration against what it sees as 'woke' ideologies. Advertisement The NSF said in a statement that it was 'suspending awards to UCLA because they are not in alignment with current NSF priorities and/or programmatic goals.' The NIH did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In recent weeks, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Brown, and others have had federal funding reduced or threatened based on broad accusations from the Trump administration that range from antisemitism to improper support for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. In some cases, the government has used the threat of funding cuts to extract concessions and hundreds of millions of dollars from universities. Advertisement Last year, UCLA was the site of one of the nation's biggest protests against the Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip. The demonstrations prompted claims from across the political spectrum that the university didn't do enough to protect Jewish students or pro-Palestinian demonstrators. On Tuesday, the university agreed to pay more than $6 million to settle a lawsuit from Jewish students and a professor who said that the university had allowed a hostile protest on campus. After the settlement was announced, the Department of Justice separately said that it had found the university violated civil rights laws by failing to respond to students' complaints of antisemitism. Although the Trump administration intensified its attacks on UCLA this week, the school had been a target of the government's scrutiny for more than a year. In May 2024, Frenk's predecessor, Gene D. Block, testified before a congressional committee examining campus antisemitism. And in February, a Trump administration task force on antisemitism identified UCLA as one of 10 schools it intended to visit as it investigated whether 'remedial action is warranted.' In recent weeks, UCLA would not say whether any of the task force's investigators had been to the campus. Frenk said in his statement Thursday that UCLA had taken 'concrete action' to address antisemitism and discrimination, including creating a new office of campus safety. 'This far-reaching penalty of defunding lifesaving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,' he wrote. He called the cuts a 'loss for Americans across the nation' whose work and health rely on the university's research. Advertisement The funding cut is an early test for Frenk, who became chancellor in January, as well as James B. Milliken, who took over as the University of California system's leader Friday. State and education leaders have been deeply concerned about the possibility that the Trump administration would target the university system as a whole, but especially the campuses in Los Angeles and Berkeley. Both schools were on the antisemitism task force's list for potential visits. But the Department of Education has also said it was investigating accusations of antisemitism at several other UC campuses.
New York Times
27 minutes ago
- New York Times
Durham's Debunking of the ‘Clinton Plan' Emails, Explained
Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, and other Trump allies have declared that a newly declassified report on the Russia investigation provides 'evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.' The reality is almost precisely the opposite. The report shows that a purported email that Trump supporters have long tried to portray as a smoking gun is instead most likely a fake. Russian spies appear to have tried to make it seem authentic by assembling passages lifted from actual emails by different hacking victims. Here is a closer look. What is the issue? In recent weeks, the Trump administration has declassified a series of reports and documents related to the origins of the Russia inquiry as it has sought to change the subject from its broken promise to release Jeffrey Epstein files. Mr. Trump and his aides have coupled those releases with wild and inaccurate claims about what they show, spinning the reports as proof of his long-running narrative that the investigation was a hoax instigated by enemies for political reasons. There are different versions of this narrative: blaming President Barack Obama and his appointees, a supposed cabal of career national security officials, Hillary Clinton and her 2016 presidential campaign, or some combination of them. The latest declassification centers on Mrs. Clinton. What is the 'Clinton Plan' theory? The theory posits that Mrs. Clinton and her campaign must have set out to frame Mr. Trump for collusion by putting forward information they knew to be false. It is a way to blame Mrs. Clinton for the fact that Mr. Trump's campaign came under suspicions that prompted the Russia investigation eventually led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel. In reality, the F.B.I. opened its investigation based on a lead it received from the Australian government in late July 2016, after WikiLeaks released Democratic emails stolen by Russian hackers and disrupted the Democratic convention. The tip involved a Trump campaign adviser suggesting, before the hacking had become public, that the campaign had received outreach from Russia and knew what it would do. Trump allies interested in blaming Mrs. Clinton's campaign have focused, as an origin story, on a purported July 27, 2016, email that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a plan by a campaign foreign policy adviser to link Mr. Trump to Russia as a way of distracting from the scandal over her use of a personal email server while secretary of state. When did the 'Clinton Plan' enter the discourse? It became a topic of discussion in late September 2020, as that year's presidential campaign neared an end. John Ratcliffe, a top intelligence official under Mr. Trump, declassified and made public that Russian intelligence analysis claimed Mrs. Clinton had 'approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal' against Mr. Trump by tying him to President Vladimir V. Putin and Russian hacking. While acknowledging that the information might be inaccurate or a fabrication, Mr. Ratcliffe also revealed that John Brennan, the C.I.A. director in 2016, had mentioned this claim in Russian intelligence analysis in a briefing to Mr. Obama about Russia's election meddling in August of that year. Later, John H. Durham, the special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to scour the Russia investigation for wrongdoing, referred to the purported email in his 2023 final report as the 'Clinton Plan intelligence.' Where did the information come from? In 2016, a Dutch spy agency hacked a Russian spy agency and copied internal memos and messages by Russian intelligence analysts. The Russians were writing reports about various topics based on the emails of American victims of Russian hacking operations. The Dutch shared a copy of the trove with the United States. From the beginning, U.S. officials have said, they viewed the material with caution. Among other things, some reports were said to make inconsistent or false claims — raising the possibility that Russians had exaggerated things for their own purposes, or knew the server was compromised and deliberately mixed in disinformation. What is the new report? It is a 29-page annex to Mr. Durham's 2023 report. The annex, which was declassified on Thursday, quotes the purported July 27 email and reveals that there was a related one on July 25. The report also shows how Mr. Durham expended significant effort trying to prove that the emails were real, but gathered evidence that led him to conclude that Russian spies likely concocted them. What are the two purported emails? Both are attributed to Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundations network, the philanthropic arm of the liberal financier George Soros, whom Russian state media and some conservatives have vilified. The July 25 message contained two paragraphs about reporting on the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and its political impact. It then stated: 'Julie says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the F.B.I. will put more oil into the fire.' The message dated July 27 opens by claiming that 'HRC approved Julia's idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections. That should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level.' An accompanying memo by Russian intelligence analysts identified the person who supposedly proposed the plan as neither Julie nor Julia, but Julianne Smith, a foreign policy adviser for the Clinton campaign who worked at a think tank called the Center for a New American Security. What did interviews show? Early in his scrutiny of the purported emails in 2020 and early 2021, Mr. Durham wrote, he interviewed several intelligence analysts who said that the emails appeared 'likely authentic.' But he described subsequently gathering evidence that pointed in the other direction. Some of the evidence was interviews that took place later in 2021 and in 2022. Mrs. Clinton and high-level campaign officials told Mr. Durham that the material Mr. Ratcliffe had declassified was ridiculous and looked like Russian disinformation. Ms. Smith said she had not seen the purported Benardo emails and had no memory of suggesting to campaign leaders that they should attack Mr. Trump over Russia. After Mr. Benardo saw the purported emails in May 2021, he said that they were unfamiliar, and that he did not recall drafting them, did not know who 'Julie' was and would not use the phrase 'put more oil into the fire.' What did think tank emails show? Mr. Durham did not identify the intended recipients of the emails supposedly from Mr. Benardo. But he gathered emails from four liberal-leaning think tanks, including Mr. Benardo's employer and Ms. Smith's, in an effort to find copies proving they were real. The organizations did not have copies of the purported emails on their servers. But in that process, Mr. Durham uncovered other 'emails, attachments and documents that contain language and references with the exact same or similar verbiage' to the two messages. Those included a July 25 email by a Carnegie Endowment cybersecurity expert that contained an extensive passage about Russian hacking that was echoed, verbatim, as the opening of the purported July 25 message attributed to Mr. Benardo. Was there any contrary evidence? Mr. Durham obtained text messages from Ms. Smith on July 25 showing that she had unsuccessfully tried to determine whether the F.B.I. had opened an investigation into the Democratic National Committee breach, although she did not mention Mr. Trump. That exchange, Mr. Durham wrote, 'supports the notion that the campaign might have wanted or expected F.B.I. or other agencies to aid that effort' by investigating the hacking. He also obtained a July 27 email from Ms. Smith asking her colleagues at the think tank to sign a bipartisan statement criticizing Mr. Trump's denunciations of NATO as reckless and too friendly to Russia. That email 'certainly lends at least some credence that such a plan existed,' Mr. Durham wrote. What else was in the trove of Russian memos? It included other evidence supporting doubts about whether the emails were real. There were two versions of the supposed July 25 email — one that contained a sentence referring to the Olympics doping scandal and one that did not have it. There were also messages between Russians reacting to material appearing in American news outlets about the Russian hacking. The Trump administration redacted some discussion and details about those messages, but Mr. Durham cited them directly in between reproducing the July 25 and July 27 messages. In one, Russians discussed creating something that would seem to come from 'some dark forces, like the F.B.I. for instance, or better yet, Clinton sympathizers in IC, Pentagon, Deep State,' using an apparent abbreviation for intelligence community. The other appeared to discuss making something to 'illuminate' how Mrs. Clinton was trying to vilify Moscow and discredit Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. The purported July 27 email was attached to that message, Mr. Durham reported. What is the bottom line? The two crucial emails were most likely manufactured by Russian spies, who appear to have assembled them in part using passages lifted from various hacked messages written by people other than Mr. Benardo. 'The office's best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the U.S.-based think tanks, including the Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Endowment and others,' Mr. Durham's annex says.
Bloomberg
30 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
FBI Redacted Trump's Name in Epstein Files for Privacy Reasons
The Federal Bureau of Investigation redacted President Donald Trump's name and those of other high-profile individuals from government files related to Jeffrey Epstein, according to three people familiar with the matter. The redactions were made by a team of FBI employees tasked with reviewing the Epstein files for potential public release. The names were withheld under privacy protections because those individuals, including Trump, were private citizens when the federal investigation into Epstein began in 2006, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
