Author and host of the ABC true crime podcast Truth and Lies: The Informant, Dick Lehr joined Good Morning America on Saturday to discuss the case behind the podcast, a foiled bombing of Somali immigrants in Garden City, Kansas, in 2016. Not content to tell a compelling and true story of undercover law enforcement thwarting terrorist attacks, Lehr found a way to tie Donald Trump to the plot.
Host Whit Johnson asked Lehr, who is also a journalism professor, to “tell us about this Kansas community and how it became a home for hate and a violent plot that, as we pointed out earlier, officials say could have surpassed the death toll of the Oklahoma City bombing if it had been successful.”
Lehr’s response was innocent enough, explaining how immigrants from Mexico to Vietnam to Somalia have found their way to Garden City because of available work at the nearby meatpacking plants.
Johnson then got to the plot itself, “And what more have you learned about the KSF militia and its plans?”
Lehr credited a man named Dan Day for infiltrating and thwarting the attack, but quickly moving on, he declared:
We just come off the, you know, the Congressional hearings into, you know, January 6th. This was in 2016. And it's a precursor, almost a canary in the coal mine, so to speak and through this compelling case we’re able to see how something like this comes together and how they’re driven by such hate and bigotry emboldened by then-candidate Donald Trump just the way the insurrectionists were emboldened on January 6th.
Before ABC turned this case into a podcast, they turned it into a Hulu documentary and when they were marketing that documentary, they reported that the idea of using Day as an informant was first brought up in July 2015. Trump announced on June 16, the idea these people needed Trump to be radicalized is ridiculous.
This is season two of this particular podcast, but one should not hold their breath for ABC to make season three about how someone was radicalized by Bernie Sanders brought himself to shoot a bunch of Republicans practicing for a charity baseball game.
This segment was sponsored by Discover.
Here is a transcript for the January 14 show:
ABC Good Morning America
1/14/2023
9:20 AM ET
WHIT JOHNSON: And tell us about this Kansas community and how it became a home for hate and a violent plot that, as we pointed out earlier, officials say could have surpassed the death toll of the Oklahoma City bombing if it had been successful.
DICK LEHR: Oh, I know. Garden City is a really fascinating community because, as many have called it, it's a multicultural Mecca. Because of the, you know, humongous meatpacking plants in the surrounding area, it's been a draw for decades to immigrants looking for work. There are Mexican-Americans and then in the '70s, the Vietnamese who were fleeing the fall of Saigon and more recently a lot of African immigrants and especially from Somalia in the last two decades have moved to Garden City.
Word gets around there's work there and there was a growing population. It’s-- at the turn of the century it became a majority-minority community which seems surprising in the middle of the, you know, southern great plains.
JOHNSON: And what more have you learned about the KSF militia and its plans?
LEHR: Well, we, you know, thankfully because of the courage of Dan Day and the infiltration of this, you know, group of extreme domestic terrorists, the bomb was thwarted and we just learned how this can come together, you know. We just come off the, you know, the Congressional hearings into, you know, January 6th. This was in 2016. And it's a precursor, almost a canary in the coal mine, so to speak and through this compelling case we’re able to see how something like this comes together and how they’re driven by such hate and bigotry emboldened by then-candidate Donald Trump just the way the insurrectionists were emboldened on January 6th.
