On Friday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY White House Correspondent Joey Garrison talks through some of the latest developments in the wake of this week’s New Orleans terror attack. Will House Speaker Mike Johnson keep his job? Donald Trump will hold a ‘victory rally’ in Washington on the eve of Inauguration Day. USA TODAY National Correspondent Chris Kenning tells us about the latest American treasure hunt. The College Football Playoff semifinals are now set.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I’m Taylor Wilson, and today is Friday, January 3rd, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, we discuss the timeline leading up to the deadly terror attack in New Orleans this week, plus we preview today’s House speaker vote, and there’s a new treasure hunt in America.
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We’re learning more about the timeline leading up to a suspect’s attack in New Orleans early on New Year’s Day this week. I spoke with USA TODAY White House correspondent, Joey Garrison for more. Joey, thank you so much for making some time on this.
Joey Garrison:
Hey, thanks for having me on.
Taylor Wilson:
So Joey, I know a couple of days have passed, still a developing story, but I’m just curious what we know as of now, and if you could walk us through what we’ve learned about the timeline of events leading up to and on this early morning in New Orleans, earlier this week.
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, so the FBI on Thursday provided a rough timeline of the whereabouts and developments of the suspect, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar of Houston leading up to this attack. He picked up a rented white pickup truck, a Ford F-150, from Houston on Monday. December 30th, drove that vehicle from Houston to New Orleans. On New Year’s Eve, shortly before the attack, in about an hour and a half span from 1:30 AM to 3:00 AM, he posted five videos on an online platform proclaiming his support for ISIS according to the FBI. ISIS, of course, the Islamic State terrorist group.
In one of those videos, according to the FBI, he said he originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned the news headlines out of doing so would, quote, “not focus on war between the believers and the disbelievers.” As we know, Jabbar had a Islamic ISIS flag in the back of his truck that was found afterwards.
Around 3:15 AM, again going through this timeline, is when Jabbar drove his truck onto a blocked off section of Bourbon Street, near Canal Street. Bourbon Street, of course being the very famous nightlife quarter in New Orleans. And that’s when he drove over victims and opened fire. He was eventually taken out by police after his vehicle crashed. And so that’s sort of a rough timeline of those events leading up to the horrible attack.
Taylor Wilson:
And Joey, just in terms of what we’ve since learned, I know that there was some talk about other explosive devices as well. Have we learned anything about that?
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, so two explosive devices that were never detonated were found in ice coolers on different sections of Bourbon Street. According to video surveillance relayed by the FBI, surveillance video captured Jabbar placing those coolers at those locations around 1:00 to 2:00 AM, again, so about an hour or more before he drove the pickup truck onto Bourbon Street.
President Biden revealed in remarks on Thursday that there was found to be a remote detonator in the truck of the deceased suspect, Jabbar, that seemingly was meant to set off those explosives, but again, they were not detonated. So obviously, horribly, 15 individuals, including the suspect were killed. But if these explosive devices had gone off, the carnage could have been a lot greater.
Taylor Wilson:
Joey, multiple officials said in the wake of the incident initially that they suspected others may be involved in the attack. What do we know as it pertains to that point and is there any relation to the Tesla that exploded in Las Vegas the same day?
Joey Garrison:
Well, so the FBI has now said repeatedly and President Biden reiterated that it appears the actions of Jabbar in New Orleans was done by himself, that he was a lone wolf, did not have co-conspirators working with him to execute this. Jabbar is a 42-year-old former military veteran in Afghanistan. One of the forts he was appointed to was Fort Bragg. That matches closely similarities to the suspect in the Las Vegas Trump Hotel explosion. Of course, the explosion being from a Tesla Cybertruck also on New Year’s Day. Despite those credible similarities there, the FBI said that they have to this point found no evidence of a link between these two cases.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Joey, you mentioned President Biden. This attack of course comes in the final weeks of his presidency. What have we heard from him and his administration just generally in response to this violence? And also President-elect, soon-to-be President Donald Trump, how has he approached this incident?
Joey Garrison:
Well, Biden convened his Homeland Security team in the situation room of the White House on Thursday to be updated by this. He quickly came out, had an address on the evening of New Year’s Day, of course, after the event in Las Vegas had happened that morning and the tragedy in Las Vegas had happened later in the day. And so he’s tried to get ahead of it in that way, obviously offering condolences to the victims as well as pledging to figure out exactly how all this unfolded.
We heard from President-elect Trump very quickly after the attack on New Year’s Day morning in New Orleans, suggest it was the result of open borders and migration and trying to link those two. Of course, he’s been a major proponent in terms of securing the border, offering greater border security at the Southern border. However, as I said earlier, the suspect is not in fact an immigrant. So any ties to suggesting that he came into the country illegally, that’s just off base. And this individual, Jabbar, was in fact born in Texas and was a resident in Texas.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. We know this story is still developing. Folks can stay with usatoday.com for more. Joey Garrison is a White House correspondent with USA TODAY. Thank you, Joey.
Joey Garrison:
Hey, thank you, Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
House speaker Mike Johnson will try to hold onto his position and lead House Republicans through two more years under a second Donald Trump presidency, where his party also holds control of the Senate. The vote to elect the next speaker comes as the GOP will have even smaller margins of power in the House, though. The soft-spoken speaker who himself came into power after former speaker, Kevin McCarthy was toppled in a GOP revolt, has his conference’s nominal support after winning a vote in November.
But a tumultuous last-minute spending deal to avoid a government shutdown in December has prompted a handful of Republicans to publicly question whether they will vote for Johnson to serve another term in leadership, raising the possibility that the House will be frozen in limbo for days or weeks without a speaker. That could create complications for the certification of electoral votes on January 6th, and with Donald Trump’s inauguration fast approaching on January 20th.
Whether Johnson wins may depend on Trump’s endorsement. The former and future president threw his weight behind the Louisiana Republican on Monday saying in a statement on Truth Social that Johnson has his complete and total endorsement. Still at least one House Republican, Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky has said he will not support Johnson today no matter what. All House Democrats are expected to vote for Hakeem Jeffries. So Johnson must win every other present voting Republican member’s support to become speaker. But some members still may not want to support him or prefer other candidates like Congressman Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the number three Republican leader in the House. House Judiciary chair, Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, a founding member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus could be another option.
President-elect Donald Trump will hold a victory rally in Washington for supporters the day before Inauguration Day. The rally at Capital One Arena is set for January 19th, according to a signup sheet that bills the event as a victory rally you’ll never forget. It’ll mark the first time Trump has headlined a rally since his election victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in November.
A joint session of Congress will meet on Monday to count the electoral votes certifying Trump’s victory four years after a mob of Trump supporters violently attacked the capitol in protest of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory against Trump. Biden has said he’ll attend Trump’s inauguration ceremony even though Trump skipped Biden’s inauguration in 2021.
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Crypto millionaire, Jon Collins-Black hid some of his fortune as part of a treasure hunt, the latest of its kind in America after another treasure was found in 2020. I spoke with USA TODAY national correspondent, Chris Kenning to learn more. Hello, Chris.
Chris Kenning:
Hello.
Taylor Wilson:
Chris, I really enjoyed this piece. Would you just start by telling us a little bit about Jon Collins-Black and this treasure hunt he’s created?
Chris Kenning:
So Jon Collins-Black told me that he had a past with different business ventures and he had invested in cryptocurrency. And by around 2015, he’d made a lot of money doing that and he was looking for what he wanted to do with his life going forward. And it was around then that he stumbled on this treasure hunt that had been set up by the late Forrest Fenn, who was the New Mexico art dealer who had hid a million dollar treasure in 2010 and left clues in a poem that created this search that captured a lot of people’s imagination.
So he wound up searching for that himself and didn’t find it, but around the pandemic, he decided that he wanted to create his own treasure hunt. That meant first he had to amass a treasure. So he spent about $2 million acquiring items that he wanted some to look like something you’d find in a traditional pirate’s treasure chest, including gold bars that had been salvaged from a ship, an emerald from Sri Lanka and things like that. But he also wanted to broaden the appeal, so he included a Bitcoin, a jelly glass that was owned by George Washington. There was a Picasso pendant. There’s even a Michael Jordan rookie card and some Pokemon cards that are quite valuable.
So he got all these items together and put them in five boxes that he hid around the country. And then he wrote a book that was released in November called There’s Treasure Inside. In the pages, there’s the story of his life and of the valuables, but there’s puzzles and maps. “And the book,” he says, “contains all the clues you need to find the boxes.” So the public hunt kicked off in November when the book came out and it’s really snowballed in interest since then.
Taylor Wilson:
Who is participating here, Chris? What have you heard from some of these folks and really, what do they get out of this?
Chris Kenning:
Some of the amateur treasure hunters that I spoke with for the piece were Kristie and Mike Cowling. They live in Nevada and have day jobs, but they both are really interested in these amateur treasure hunts, and now they run a YouTube channel to discuss the theories and clues. They’ve been on a number of them. This one’s really gained traction with both amateur hunters as well as new people. For a lot of these folks, it’s about adventure, it’s about community and of course a shot at riches. But a lot of them love to get together and talk theories and pour over every detail of the book and then take some of those clues and go to various possible sites around the country.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Chris, you mentioned Forrest Fenn. This was of course the late art dealer who’s, what, million plus dollar treasure was found in 2020. Several people died searching for that treasure before then, Chris. I’m curious, are there concerns about the dangers of this kind of treasure hunting and how about the potentially addictive nature to these kinds of quests?
Chris Kenning:
One enthusiast I spoke to was a Chicago area retiree. He took more than a dozen trips during the Fenn treasure hunt, and he said he saw people grow too obsessed with it. He knew one guy personally who lost toes because of frostbite when he went out unprepared. And another guy he knows, lost a lot of his life savings, searching for it. There was a psychologist who talked about the issues of fixation and the sunk cost fallacy that people can get into with this, like, “I’ve already sunk so much into this, it’s got to pay off. I have to keep at it.” That was something that really came to the surface during the Fenn hunt.
But Collins-Black said he really designed his hunt in the hopes of avoiding all that. He made it very clear that none of the treasure boxes are hidden on private property. None are buried underground or in a dangerous place. You don’t need special equipment, and each one is like three miles from a public road. Even in his book, he devotes a part of the book to talking about being safe, and he said, “I’m really trying to drill into people’s minds that you don’t have to do anything dangerous for this.”
Taylor Wilson:
All right, another terrific story from you, Chris. Chris Kenning is a national correspondent with USA TODAY. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Kenning:
Thank you so much.
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Taylor Wilson:
The college football playoff semifinals are now set. Notre Dame took down Georgia yesterday in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, a game that was postponed a day after this week’s terror attack. The city’s Superdome is also set to host the NFL Super Bowl next month, and the NFL issued a statement offering support to the victims and those affected, while also assuring that the event will be safe. As for the rest of the college football season, Notre Dame will take on Penn State next week on Thursday, followed by Ohio State and Texas in the other semifinal on Friday. The winners will then battle it out in the national championship game.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We’re produced by Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you’re on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I’m Taylor Wilson, and I’ll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
