A speeding car flew, literally, into the border checkpoint at Niagara Falls, bursting into flames after the impact and killing the two people within it. It was just a car wreck, the FBI concluded, with no sign of terrorism and no evidence of explosives at the scene.
The FBI's decision late Wednesday came several hours after the vehicle raced through an intersection, hit a median and was launched through the air before slamming into a line of booths and exploding at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls. Local police are now handling the case as a traffic investigation.
"A search of the scene revealed no explosive materials, and no terrorism nexus was identified," the FBI's Buffalo office said in a statement. "The matter has been turned over to the Niagara Falls Police Department as a traffic investigation."
Nonetheless, various conservative figures, such as U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, persist in claims that it was a terrorist attack—some of them even accusing completely imaginary "islamists" of being responsible and that it came somehow from the Canadian side—open borders!
"This confirms our worst fear: the explosion at Rainbow Bridge was a terrorist attack. Both attackers are dead, and one law enforcement officer is injured," read Cruz's post.
You can't libel the dead, as Cruz well knows.
Fox News, at least, retracted its earlier claims along these lines (it's not clear how it sourced them, but it's usually one of its quasi-journalistic news personalities talking to a quasi-insider who knows the brief.)
We're past whatever event horizon there was abut this sort of thing. They lie from the outset and persist in the lies even after it's obvious to anyone who cares that it was just made up. The problem is that the audience doesn't care if it's a lie or has no truth beyond what Ted Cruz or whoever writes on Twitter.
