He cited Wikipedia and the Stephen Paddock article which claimed that Paddock was a right wing extremist and that the Las Vegas police investigation said that he believed in FEMA camps and that people should arm themselves. The full quote can bee found below:
After finding the cite note I discovered that the primary source did say that someone claimed that Paddock was a right wing extremist but the Wikipedia entry left out much of the context. Instead of being an official finding of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department investigation the New York Magazine made it clear that it was just one witness statement out of the more than 1000 statements collected during the investigation.
Further more it is very clear that the witness isn't reliable. The man was a jailhouse informant that had been pinched on a possession charge and stated that he was desperate for money. He supposedly contacted Paddock who wanted help converting his AR's to fully automatic firearms and that Paddock had confided with him about the government.
There is a reason why people don't find jailhouse informants to be reliable and this is a pretty good example. It was pretty clear that he is full of it because Paddock's plan never involved fully automatic weapons. He was rich enough that he could have bought some and he would have passed the extreme vetting involved. Furthermore Paddock already had his bumpstocks to simulate fully automatic fire in the first place, so why would he need to further modify the weapons? It doesn't make any sense and calls into question everything else the witness said.
Of course there is also the fact that the police report mentioned none of this. You would think that if the police though this witness was reliable they would have included that into the final police report and said that there was a clear and convincing motive. The report says nothing of the sort and I know this because I read the entire thing (excluding the autopsy information).
It's very clear that this "witness" was probably just making things up. The police investigated, found him not credible and did not include his statement in the final report. It was clear that he was a jailhouse snitch trying to catch a break on his case and probably never even met Stephen Paddock, let alone had a conversation to him about his beliefs.
What little we know of Paddock's political beliefs and motivations do not suggest he is a conspiracy theorist or that he did the attack in favor of gun control. The people that knew him best, his girlfriend and brother, said he was largely apolitical but did express some support of Trump's actions on illegal immigrants and was not a fan of Obama. There was nothing in there about him ranting about FEMA or trying to get people to buy weapons to oppose gun control. Indeed, Paddock's friends and family seem just as confused as anyone else as to why Paddock did what he did.
I thought the original New York Magazine article to be irresponsible at best as it was clear that this wasn't a fruitful line of investigation for the police, but what the Wikipedia article did was much worse. Not only did they strip away all of the context of the witness statement they also said that it was some kind of official police finding. Furthermore the AP article that was cited by the New York Magazine said the Clark County Chairman hadn't even heard of the account and didn't know if it was credible.
It's very clear to me that this is a good example why you cannot trust Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article is two layers removed from the primary source, a witness statement that I haven't been able to find and am not sure exists, stripped away much of the context that sheds doubt on the statement and further lied saying that the motive was a finding of the Las Vegas Police Department's investigation (as an aside, it's not the Las Vegas Police Department, it's the Las Vegas METRO Police Department, but that's a common and forgivable mistake, unlike the rest of this).
The worst thing is that I can't go into Wikipedia and correct this. For one thing there is the stupid reliance on secondary sources that would strip out the primary evidence for this being fake news, which is the final police report. The same thing could be said for my blog pointing this out as I am not notable enough to be a "reliable source". There isn't much I can do to fix this myself.
It's also obvious that this is another good example of left wing bias on Wikipedia. That bias is well known and there have been some truly epic edit wars on Wikipedia. The page on Gamergate is probably the most well known example, with the Wikipedia page having little resemblance to reality, but it is far from the only one.
I am guessing that this edit is allowed to stand because it makes the opponents of leftism look bad. Not only are they trying to paint all conspiracy theorist as being the same as Stephen Paddock, it also makes right wingers and gun rights advocates look bad as well. I also think it is telling that a similar fringe theory, though one that has much more evidence than this one, is correctly called out as not being official and largely dismissed by experts. I am of course talking about the fact that ISIS took credit for the Las Vegas attack. If Wikipedia was being remotely fair they would have given the same disclaimers for this accusation or left it out entirely.
I think this is a good example of why you shouldn't just blindly trust Wikipedia. I know people have been saying this for years but it really is true. Wikipedia is a good resource if you are looking up something that is not political in nature but there are bad actors on the site that make sure that you won't get a full picture. Always remember to check primary sources and do not treat Wikipedia like it is going to be a end all be all for internet arguments.
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