A man with ties to ISIS has been arrested for allegedly being part of a plot to assassinate former President George W. Bush as revenge for “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
“An Iraqi citizen living in Columbus, Ohio, has been charged federally with an immigration crime and with aiding and abetting a plot to murder former United States President George W. Bush,” the Justice Department said in a statement obtained by Fox News.
The Justice Department went on to identify the suspect as 52-year-old Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab, who used a visitor visa to come to the United States in September of 2020 before filing for asylum in March of last year.
Shihab then allegedly exchanged money with others to smuggle foreign nationals into the U.S. illegally. His plan was reportedly to help four Iraqi nationals enter the U.S. through the southern border, with the goal being for them to then help him kill Bush.
The Department of Justice alleges that Shihab planned this to be “in retaliation of Iraqi deaths during ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom.'”
“The U.S. Secret Service takes all threats to our protectees seriously,” said Secret Service spokesperson Special Agent Steve Kopek. “In order to maintain operational security, the Secret Service does not discuss the means and methods used to conduct our protective operations or matters of protective intelligence.”
It is unclear if the Secret Service is taking steps to increase Bush’s security in response to this plot being exposed.
“President Bush has all the confidence in the world in the United States Secret Service and our law enforcement and intelligence communities,” said Freddy Ford, chief of staff for the Office of George W. Bush.
Retired brigadier general and New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc told Fox News that this plot just goes to show that President Joe Biden and his administration are “failing at all levels,” adding that they have left Americans “completely vulnerable” thanks to relaxed immigration laws.
“Nothing is more important than our border security, our homeland security and everything that we do to secure Americans here in this country,” he explained. “Let’s face it — the Biden administration is failing on all levels here, and they are just doing things that are exacerbating the opportunity for this. Thank goodness our joint terrorism task force have been in place. We have cooperation at the federal, state, local level outside the country to identify these threats, but they only have to be right once.”
“We have to be right every single time and the Biden administration, with their policies, have left Americans completely vulnerable across the board, not only here in the United States, but outside the United States, across the world and this must change,”Bolduc continued. “I hope this is a wake-up call, but we haven’t seen any wake-up calls for the economy, inflation, fiscal stability or anywhere else where they’ve created significant vulnerability for Americans.”
Bush himself has yet to publicly comment on this alleged plot against his life.
This piece originally appeared in RobManess.com and is used by permission.
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