Route 91 Music Festival To Return To Vegas After Las Vegas Shooting
Laura Loomer
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While we still don’t know what happened the night of the Las Vegas Shooting on October 1, 2017, when 58 people were shot dead at the Route 91 Country Music Festival, the festival is set to return to Vegas next year during fall of 2019.
While speaking at a music industry conference on the “The Festival Promoter: Past, Present and Future” panel hosted at the Mandalay Bay , Julie Matway, the COO of Country Nation said, “Route 91 Harvest here in Las Vegas is one of my kids. I am looking forward to how and when we are going to bring that back. We are working hard on that. Hopefully we will get it online for 2019.”
The last Route 91 Country music festival became the scene of what is now the deadliest mass shooting in US history. While a motive for the shooting has still not been released by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the FBI, officials from both agencies say alleged shooter Stephen Paddock was a lone gunman who opened fire onto nearly 20,000 concert goers from his 32nd floor suite at the Mandalay Bay resort and Casino.
Mandalay Bay is owned and operated by MGM Resorts, which owns the Las Vegas Village, the festival venue.
The announcement to bring the festival back to Las Vegas is of poor taste given that it was announced at Mandalay Bay, the same hotel where the Vegas shooting took place. Mandalay Bay is also an MGM property, and MGM is currently in the process of suing nearly 1,000 victims of the Las Vegas shooting.
In July 2018, the owners of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino have filed a federal lawsuit against the victims of the Las Vegas Shooting, arguing that they are not liable. However, their argument against liability is based on a 2002 federal law that limits liability for terrorist attacks.
According to Robert Eglet, a Las Vegas lawyer who is representing several of the Las Vegas shooting victims, Mandalay Bay’s lawsuit only serves as a way to take the lawsuits out of state court and place them into federal court instead. Eglet described MGM’s actions as a form of “judge shopping” and argues that they are highly “unethical”.
“I’ve never seen a more outrageous thing, where they sue the victims in an effort to find a judge they like,” Eglet said. “It’s just really sad that they would stoop to this level.”
An MGM spokeswoman said, “The Federal Court is an appropriate venue for these cases and provides those affected with the opportunity for a timely resolution. Years of drawn out litigation and hearings are not in the best interest of victims, the community and those still healing.”
In order to use the defense of the Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act, MGM Resorts would be required to prove that the Las Vegas Shooting was an act of terrorism. However, on October 2, 2017, the day immediately following the Las Vegas shooting, Aaron Rouse, the Special Agent in Charge of the Las Vegas FBI declared that the shooting was not an act of terrorism after ISIS claimed responsibility and proclaimed Paddock as a soldier of Islam. “We have determined, to this point, no connection to an international terrorist group,” Rouse said.
The Route 91 music festival is set to take place at the Las Vegas Resorts Festival Grounds, an MGM property.
Despite making an effort to dodge responsibility for the deadliest mass shooting and suspected ISIS terrorist attack which took place on their two properties by suing victims, MGM has remained quiet on matters pertaining to the Las Vegas shooting. They have yet to release a statement explaining how they plan to increase security at next year’s festival.
Following the Las Vegas shooting, it was revealed that Paddock used the employee service elevator at Mandalay Bay to transport bags of guns to his 32nd floor suite with the assistance of MGM employees. MGM said they had improved their security so that non-employees could ever access that service elevator again, but an undercover video investigation that I filmed proved that MGM had not improved their security, despite MGM’s previous statement.
Not only was I able to ride the service elevator to the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay, but I was able to do so multiple times, with a black duffle bag and hard case used to carry guns.
Upon seeing the video, MGM Resorts released the following statement:
“We are carefully reviewing the video in our constant efforts to evaluate and refine our security procedures,” a statement from MGM Resorts read.
Given that MGM has a record of endangering guests, a complete lack of transparency, and has failed to show any personal responsibility or empathy in the aftermath of the October 1 terror attack, a Route 91 comeback in Vegas seems dismal.
One would think that the Casino conglomerate would at least wait for the official FBI report concerning the Vegas shooting to be released before they attempted to make more money on the graves of the innocent 58 victims, and one would expect the executives at MGM to be more transparent about their relationship with Paddock, but as we all know, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
Laura Loomer is a conservative investigative journalist and activist. Originally from Arizona, Laura began her career working as an undercover journalist for Project Veritas from 2015-2017. She covers politics, anti-Semitism, immigration, terrorism, the Islamification of the West, and voter fraud. Loomer’s investigations have been broadcasted on every major national mainstream media outlet in the United States, as well as many international publications. Support Laura Loomer’s Independent Journalism here: PayPal.me/lauraloomer
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