The duo who shared the manifesto of the individual allegedly behind the New Year's Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas were met with significant backlash for doing so, accused of spreading and/or falling for false information and of misleading the public. The FBI has since confirmed the provenance of the manifesto.

Blaze News spoke Wednesday to retired Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Sam Shoemate and reached out to Shawn Ryan, a former U.S. Navy Seal and CIA contractor, about the controversy over their publication of the letter.

The letter

U.S. Army Master Sgt. Matthew Alan Livelsberger allegedly pulled into the valet area outside the Trump International Hotel in a Cybertruck loaded with gasoline canisters, camping fuel, and large firework mortars on New Year's Day. Just before 8:40 a.m., the vehicle detonated. Livelsberger's death has been ruled a suicide.

Prior to heading to Las Vegas, Livelsberger, who was on leave, reached out to Shoemate, who runs a whistleblower website, providing him with his manifesto. Whereas authorities frequently try to keep the public in the dark regarding the contents of suspects' manifestos — as in the case of the 2023 Covenant School shooting in Nashville — Shoemate, though skeptical about its contents, felt an obligation to share Livelsberger's email on "The Shawn Ryan Podcast."

"Thursday morning, I woke up — I believe it was sometime around 8:47 a.m., that was the timestamp on my Signal chat — and my friend sent me this message with a screenshot from a news site, and he said, 'Hey do you know this guy? Nobody seems to know him,'" said Shoemate, referring to the subject in the Las Vegas explosion story. "With just a pure adrenaline surge, I shot out of bed. 'Holy cow, this is the dude who emailed me two days ago.'"

Shoemate indicated that Livelsberger previously reached out to him, telling him not to respond in an initial email, then following up with his manifesto in a Dec. 31 email.

"I had serious reservations when I first got the email, and I didn't put any stock in it when I first saw it because it was crazy, in my opinion," said Shoemate. "I looked at it, and as soon as we [Shoemate and Livelsberger] started talking about this stuff, I responded some time later and said, 'I can't do anything with this.' I'm not sure exactly how I worded it, but something to the effect of, 'If I take this on social media and talk about it ... there's nothing here that I can verify or substantiate.'"

Shoemate told Blaze News that when military whistleblowers approach him, the expectation is that they provide evidence for their claims: "I need memos. I need emails. I need proof that this person did this because I can't just, 'Okay, you told me a thing, so let me throw out your allegation.' No, I need to verify that the story is accurate."

"I've been doing the investigative journalism aspect of things for the past several years, and this was completely unverifiable," said Shoemate. "It wasn't until after he did what he did and I saw his name in the news that I'm like, 'Holy crap, this needs to go into the public domain.'"

Ryan evidently shared Shoemate's sense of duty, telling Blaze News that "this email would not have made it to the public had we not released it."

Shoemate sent the letter to the FBI — from where it apparently made its way to the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, then on to United States Special Operations Command — and he discussed it with Ryan in what proved to be a highly controversial podcast episode.

BlazeTV's Jason Buttrill, chief researcher for Glenn Beck, a former U.S. Marine and intelligence analyst for the Pentagon, told Blaze News, "The best thing that they could have done … is exactly what they did."

"They released the information. We've been screaming for years for the government and law enforcement to provide transparency in these kinds of cases," continued Buttrill. "Instead, we get redactions and silence, and social media accounts are scrubbed. Shawn released the information, let the public draw their own conclusions, and he should be commended for that."

Some weren't similarly keen on this apparent exercise in transparency.

The backlash

Shoemate and Ryan were met with fierce backlash for sharing the letter. Some critics suggested they had been duped and that the letter had not been sent by Livelsberger.

Whereas Walter Kirn, co-host on "America This Week," suggested Monday that Shoemate and Ryan had fallen for fake emails, Ryan McBeth, a YouTuber who often discusses military intelligence, claimed in a Jan. 4 video titled "Shawn Ryan and Sam Shoemate Are Lying" that Shoemate was engaged in a "conspiracy theory crusade to undermine my beloved Army either for clicks, clout, or revenge," and had possibly manufactured the email himself. McBeth drew this conclusion, in part, because of the appearance of red-lined spelling errors on the image of the letter shown in Ryan's podcast.

Sebastian Gorka, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be the counterterrorism chief on the White House National Security Council, shared McBeth's video, stating, "Trust @RyanMcbeth to skewer another fraud."

Shoemate told Blaze News that he was not responsible for the screenshot of the version of the letter shown during the podcast.

"I didn't send them that," said Shoemate. "I sent them the raw, unredacted email — the same thing I sent to the FBI. I'm not sending the FBI screenshots. That's very silly. I sent them the raw, unredacted email."

The podcast apparently uploaded a redacted version of the letter into Apple Notes, which resulted in the red spelling lines that prompted some of the skepticism about the origin of the letter.

Other critics suggested that both host and guest were engaged, wittingly or not, in a government psyop aimed at misleading the American people.

For some would-be critics unaware of his previous work bringing whistleblower complaints to the forefront, Shoemate said, "I'm either a fraud and a liar who made this up — it's a hell of a thing to subject yourself to a felony and jail time for some followers on social media — or I'm a deep-state plant, and I'm working in conjunction with the bomber or with the agency, or whatever."

Investigative reporter Matt Taibbi, among those who suspected something was amiss about the letter, called the podcast "brilliant theater, on par with Alfred Hitchcock's marketing of Psycho" and noted, "The canny reader will also notice the twin sets of Livelsberger manifestos seem perfectly tailored for left and right audiences, with the Shawn Ryan deep state action-flick jetting across conservative media, and the PTSD-stricken toxic-masculinity bomber tale getting full play in papers like the Times and Washington Post."

When asked about his early sense that "taking this public would insert [him] into the 'glowy boi' conspiracy cycle," Shoemate told Blaze News that by virtue of his intelligence history, people rush to write him off as a "fed in disguise."

Ryan suggested Tuesday that some of the attacks that he and Shoemate faced were perhaps ego-driven.

Over the past few days, something has become very apparent to me. Everyone claims to want truth, transparency, and disclosure, unless they aren't a part of it. And if they are not a part of it, they will stop at nothing to try and destroy everything you've ever done, no matter how much good, or how much truth, their ego will consume their entire mind and eventually their entire existence. Humanity is in a sad state.

Navy Commander Robert A. Green Jr., among those who rallied to the duo's defense, told Blaze News, "Those living disordered principles and pursuing selfish agenda will find themselves much more susceptible to the temptation to lash out at those pursuing truth for truth's sake."

When asked about the nature of the backlash and its ferocity, Ryan told Blaze News in a written statement, "This was a breaking, sensitive subject in a time when public trust in our institutions is at an all-time low. Additionally, the public is still learning how to interpret information and who to trust now that social media and podcasts are becoming primary delivery mechanisms for information. We understand skepticism and welcome it."

The confirmation

The FBI confirmed in a press conference Tuesday that the letter read by Shoemate and also sent to Ryan's podcast had in fact been sent by Livelsberger.

Spencer Evans, special agent in charge of the FBI in Las Vegas, stated, "We have confirmed the document that he sent to the podcast. We know that he was one that sent that document. That's correct."

"We're not speaking to the content," Evans noted. "I mean, he's talking about feeling that he was, you know, surveilled — guilt. You can tell that there's, you know, some anguish there, some frustration with the government."

In the letter, Livelsberger suggested that the drones causing a stir over the East Coast were communist Chinese in origin, were submarine-launched, and utilized gravitic propulsion systems; that either the FBI or Homeland Security had been following him; that he conducted targeting for airstrikes allegedly conducted in Afghanistan in 2019 that resulted in civilian casualties; and that he was part of a cover-up of war crimes.

"We haven't gotten into, you know, what's legitimate, what's not," said Evans. "We haven't vetted any of his writings to determine, you know, what's legitimate and what was in his own head."

Apologies, aftermath

Some individuals who painted Shoemate and Ryan as frauds have apologized.

Kirn, who did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment by deadline, apologized to Ryan on Wednesday, writing, "On a Monday night podcast I said I thought he had been fooled by the emails sent by the apparent Las Vegas bomber. Yesterday the FBI affirmed that indeed they had been sent by the person. I may not always trust officialdom, but I have no basis to dispute the statement. I'm sorry, Mr Ryan."

McBeth has since noted on Youtube that he was "wrong to call Sam Shoemate and Shawn Ryan Liars" and apologized on X.

Ryan responded, "You damaged my credibility unnecessarily with false information. That type of recklessness is irresponsible especially from a former intelligence analyst, and I hope moving forward you will keep that in mind as it will now take sometime to reestablish my credibility because of what you’ve done to me. That said, I accept your apology."

Gorka, who amplified McBeth's video, does not appear to have similarly issued a public mea culpa.

Ryan, who initially responded, "The only fraud here is you @SebGorka," wrote Thursday, "Hey @SebGorka even your source publicly admitted he was wrong and apologized to me. Considering this is the type of place you receive your information from, it should rouse a lot of alarms in every Americans [sic] head due to the fact you have a position in the next administration."

"We appreciate all of those who have had the courage to admit their mistakes," Ryan told Blaze News.

Reflecting on the controversy, Buttrill noted, "I think some of the backlash could have been from Ryan and Shoemate going too far into the weeds of what could have happened. When they started hypothesizing some of the more fringe explanations (using tradecraft to conceal location, auto-driving Cybertruck, etc.), they opened themselves up to criticism."

"I think they spent a little too much time making it appear as if they were assuming everything Livelsberger was alleging was actually true," continued Buttrill. "I think more could have been said on the effects of what the Afghanistan disaster has done mentally to our heroes that fought in this war. And they also could have used the opportunity — as vets of this war — to start a real conversation on what Biden’s clusterf**k (sorry for language) has done to the warfighters. PTSD and traumatic brain injuries need to be examined and treated … not stigmatized, but treated."

Shoemate indicated his key takeaway from the ordeal.

The public demands to be told what is going on from their government and from these federal agencies when some sort of event happens like a school shooting or anything else, and the backlash against the government is fierce when they don't release manifestos or any other information that people feel is pertinent to what's going on. Yet when somebody does make the effort to — in good faith — bring this information to public knowledge and awareness, they are treated just like the government if they were to withhold it, which is a lot harder to deal with when you're an individual versus a government entity. The coordinated attack on me and my reputation was extreme, and it's going to give any whistleblowers or anybody else with information pertinent to an event of this magnitude pause in the future when they think whether or not they want to deal with this kind of public sentiment.

Ryan noted that his show "has [been] and always will be forthcoming with the public. It is a responsibility we carry with the utmost respect, caution, and virtue. Ultimately, the lack of public trust in our institutions and mass media has created an environment where we are compelled to do such work, and we trust the public to come to their own conclusions."

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