After insisting that a media conspiracy is suppressing the footage of Muslim-Americans celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey that Donald Trump falsely claims he saw on TV, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski now claims that police officers witnessed the celebrations.
“We know it’s true,” he said in an interview yesterday with Virginia-based radio host John Fredericks. He cited a Washington Post article which he said “took into account police officers from Jersey City who saw these taking place.”
Incidentally, Lewandowski’s claim contradicts the findings of New Jersey’s top law enforcement officer at the time, who told the New York Times yesterday that an investigation found no evidence to substantiate initial rumors about such celebrations. Similarly, television networks did not broadcast any such footage, seeing that the celebrations never occurred.
But John J. Farmer Jr., then the New Jersey attorney general and the state’s chief law enforcement officer, said on Tuesday that he ordered an investigation that very day and found the reports to be bogus, more wild stories born in the stricken hours after the attacks.
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Open jubilation at the mass death, Mr. Farmer said, might quickly be followed by rioting and more deaths. “If true, we would have had to mobilize the State Police and National Guard and locked the place down,” he said.
“We followed up on that report instantly because of its implications,” he added. “The word came back quickly from Jersey City, later from Paterson. False report. Never happened.”
