By Todd Bensman
Biden/Harris DOJ argued that names of the suspects were protected on grounds of ‘personal privacy’
The Biden administration has refused answer reporters’ questions, rule out terrorism, or even reveal the names of two Jordanians in the country illegally, one of whom had illegally crossed the U.S. Southwest border, who on May 3 conducted a box truck ramming attack on Quantico Marine Corps Base.
The Department of Justice, Department of Defense, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the FBI all circled wagons to guard even the identities of the two Jordanians against five written congressional inquiries, a sixth by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin seeking government briefings about the incident, and most recently a subpoena by the Republican-led House Homeland Security Committee of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Government lawyers went so far as to refuse a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Freedom of Information Act request on grounds that releasing their names was a “clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” and of “minimal public interest” despite the congressional and media inquiries that reached a May 16 White House press briefing where President Biden’s spokesperson refused to answer.
But a systematic search of federal court records by the Center has now turned up the names of the men as Hasan Y. Hamdan and Mohammad K. Dabous. The records also provide an indication of at least what the federal government has done with them since their May 3 arrests, though stop short of why they tried to ram a truck into the military base or how they came to be in Virginia. While one Jordanian illegally crossed the border a month before the incident, the other reportedly overstayed a student visa he’d been issued but never used.
Both men stand charged in the U.S. Eastern District of Virginia’s Alexandria courthouse with Class B misdemeanors for allegedly trespassing on a military facility, together on May 3, charges which carry up to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.
The men “did unlawfully go upon a military installation for a purpose prohibited by law, to wit: knowingly and intentionally entering Marine Corps Base Quantico,” the now-identified charging documents read for both men.
Both men evidently were held by ICE until about the final week of July, when they agreed to certain conditions for their releases – that they show up for all upcoming immigration proceedings and stay away from Quantico or any other military installation, court records show. They are likely free now pending those unknown immigration proceedings and the criminal ones in Alexandria.
The Quantico incident made local headlines that quickly spread in mid-May. Marine sentries arrested both after they pulled up to a main entrance gate in a rented box truck and said they were there to make a delivery as Amazon subcontractors. When they were unable to provide any credentials, guards Instructed to pull over to a secondary inspection area for further questioning.
That was when the driver hit the gas and tried to plow through onto the base despite halt orders, media reports quoting anonymous sources said. Initially, the sources said one of the two Jordanians was on the FBI terrorism watch list, a claim that another anonymous source later disputed in a different media report.
Either way, the men would have succeeded in penetrating into the base interior except that guards deployed vehicle denial barriers.
The administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid characterizing motivations for the incident or do what most interested parties want: rule out the incident as an attempted terror attack by an illegal border-crosser.
A private attorney listed as representing Hasan Hamdan, Dwight Everette Crawley, quickly declined comment to the Center in a phone call. Crawley’s website says he is a former prosecutor-turned criminal defense trial attorney who has represented defendants in capital murder cases.
“I don’t discuss clients. Thanks for your time,” Crawley said, hanging up, when asked if he’d discuss this client.
For reasons not clear, DOJ attorneys – unusually, for such cases – did not file their charges in court for many weeks after the incident became news, not until July 9, in the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria. That’s more than two months after the arrests, when media interest had waned.
Because the government refused to release names of the arrested people on supposed privacy grounds and ostensible absence of any public interest, and also delayed filing court papers for more than two months, a systematic search in the Alexandria federal court building did not uncover the public court case records.
On July 22, when both Jordanians showed up for an “initial appearance” before a magistrate judge, ordinarily held quickly to advise arrested people of their rights and to inform them of additional hearings to come, no independent observers were present.
The Center only uncovered the court filings after another records search found them after the open July 22 hearing. The Center did not attend but did order and receive transcripts.
The transcripts showed that both Jordanians appeared in the same courtroom for the same trespass charges, with an Arabic-speaking interpreter, and also that they’d been held in custody since their May 3 arrests.
“I’d like to just point out for the Court’s awareness Mr. Hamdan and Mr. Dabous’s charges for which they’re appearing today stem from the same incident,” a prosecutor told the judge.
But the transcripts also show that, more than 10 weeks after their arrests, federal prosecutors were amenable to support their releases on a promise that they would appear for future hearings.
The judge set both men’s next hearing for 10 a.m. on September 17.
There could many reasons the government might support the release of the suspects. Investigation may have shown they were not considered a threat, or was inconclusive either way; an investigation did find derogatory motivation, but the Justice Department wanted to bury the story by foregoing attention-grabbing terrorism charges in favor of immigration proceedings; or even that the suspects may have become informants whose cooperation authorities would want to reward with a good-faith gesture.
A search of Arabic social media was unable to verify whether either man operated accounts because their names are common in Jordan and in the Palestinian occupied territories near Israel. So, little else could be learned about them.
CIS intern Hadley Ott contributed to research for this report.
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