Former FBI agent Lance Leising said on Tuesday’s edition of “Face the Nation” that the bureau likely hopes its thwarting of a planned attack on the White House’s UFC Freedom 250 event this past weekend will serve as a “deterrent” against future attacks on the Trump administration.
On Tuesday, FBI director Kash Patel wrote on X that the FBI and its law enforcement partners were made aware on June 10 of an intended attack on the UFC250 fight night, which featured a cageside appearance from President Trump. Patel wrote that, “Thanks to the rapid action of this FBI, our partners and the Department of Justice in a multi-state operation, multiple individuals are now in custody and allegedly planned attacks were stopped cold.”
“We are built to detect, respond to, and bring to justice those who threaten the lives of American citizens — particularly during large gatherings like the historic UFC 250 fight,” he added. “That’s exactly what we did here. I want to thank our great agents and partners, this work remains ongoing and we will continue to update the public as permitted.”
Appearing on “Face the Nation,” CBS News contributor Leising said he was not surprised that the FBI caught wind of the thwarted attack in question.
“Everything piques the attention of the FBI, especially around an event as broad in magnitude as that UFC fight was,” he explained. “[That was] very, very much a target of interest for people with certain motivations. So what brought it to the attention [of the FBI] was likely the extensive plan that this incurred. This involved drones, it involved a diversion and it involved directing a crowd to a certain area, and then it involved an active shooter incident. Extremely complicated to actually pull off something like this.”
The former FBI agent went on to highlight “the positives” of the operation.
“This was a threat that was identified by law enforcement, likely multiple agencies [and] likely could have been a member of the public. [Someone] that was involved in this discussion, thought it was just joking and then some of the people in the discussion probably went a little far,” Leising said. “It easily could have been brought to the attention by the public. Collaboration between the public and different law enforcement agencies is what’s going to stop these [attacks].”
“Exactly what was their motivation? How were they funded? Who else was involved? Those are big questions left unanswered,” the former FBI agent added. As for why he believes that Patel and the FBI decided to publicly disclose the attack’s thwarting, Leising said that decision was likely made with a mix of strategy and pride.
“There are multiple motivations for a law enforcement agency to bring it to the public. One is simple deterrence, just to put it out there that, ‘Hey, this is not tolerated,’” Leising said. “Federal charges can be applied when there’s just discussions. You don’t even need the overt act. So, there is a deterrent effect in getting this out there.”
“There’s a little pride probably,” he further noted. “But I would like to think that law enforcement agencies are being strategic about this and presenting this more as a deterrent than anything else to prevent this from happening in the future.”
