The gay revenge narrative of Omar Mateen’s terrorist attack in Orlando has effectively obscured his several explicit pledges to ISIS laced throughout the rampage in several calls to 911.
Following the slaughter of 49 innocent people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, news broke that Omar Mateen allegedly had multiple gay lovers, used gay dating apps, and frequented the same club he shot up. Clearly the news trumped Mateen’s sworn allegiances to ISIS, because the wider media opted primarily to cast Mateen as a conflicted, complicated and highly nuanced psychopath.
Perhaps inconveniently, the LA Times ran a story Thursday that revealed the FBI could find “no evidence” or reliable witness testimony to support that Mateen was gay or had gay lovers. In fact, his only affairs appear to have been with women.
From the LA Times:
So far, they have found no photographs, no text messages, no smartphone apps, no gay pornography and no cell-tower location data to suggest that Mateen — who was twice married to women and had a young son — conducted a secret gay life, the [FBI] officials said.
Federal agents reportedly combed through Mateen’s laptop computer and cellphone, along with the electronic communications of those who have made the claims to have consorted with Mateen. Agents came up with nada.
“Miguel,” the man who said he was Mateen’s lover for two months in an exclusive Univision interview, claimed that he had met with Mateen 15 to 20 times, the last occasion in late December. He said that Mateen had also slept with a Puerto Rican man who allegedly told him he was HIV positive.
“He adored Latinos, gay latinos with brown skin—but he felt rejected. He felt used by them. I believe this crazy horrible thing he did—that was revenge,” he told Univision.
Just 12 hours before the FBI’s findings became public, TMZ published an article claiming that the Ambassador Hotel had security footage of Omar Mateen meeting “Miguel” at the hotel for a hookup on December 14, 2015. The recording was mysteriously unavailable, as the “FBI went to the Ambassador Tuesday night and took a copy of the surveillance footage,” according to TMZ.
Federal investigators do not find “Miguel” credible, and law enforcement officials make no mention of security footage from the Ambassador, according to the LA Times. The investigation debunks speculations that Mateen shot up the nightclub as some kind of twisted revenge plot.
Other reporters have affirmed the FBI’s findings. Josh Rogin, a columnist for the Washington Post, tweeted Friday, “According to my source, the FBI discovered Omar Mateen had affairs with women but nothing about affairs with men. #Orlando.” Eric Tucker of the Associated Press wrote Friday of all those gay leads evaporating, “officials say the FBI, which has conducted about 500 interviews and is reviewing evidence collected from Mateen’s phone, has not found concrete evidence to corroborate such accounts nearly two weeks into the investigation.”
Those who have made claims are not backing down in the face of zero evidence. “The FBI obviously is trying to cover up their information,” Cord Cedeno, a Pulse regular, told the LA Times. “I can go take a lie detector test. I know for a fact Omar messaged me.”
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