In a case that reads like a grim fuse-lit parable, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police’s final 70-page dossier has only deepened the mystery surrounding the New Year’s Day explosion outside the Trump Las Vegas hotel.
The attacker, identified as 37-year-old Army Special Forces soldier Matthew Livelsberger, left behind fragments of motive and a manifest action — a rented Cybertruck loaded with fireworks, gas tanks and camping fuel that detonated outside the hotel lobby, wounding six people and ending with Livelsberger apparently shooting himself as the vehicle ignited.
The report confirms what investigators pieced together in the days after the blast: this was a premeditated, vehicle-borne improvised explosive event with obvious potential to inflict mass casualties and structural damage. Yet it resists tidy categorization.
Livelsberger’s notes, portions of which are referenced in the police report, claim the attack “was not a terrorist attack” but rather a way to “cleanse” his mind and create a spectacle that would force Americans to pay attention. He rails against what he calls the “feckless leadership” of a country “near collapse.” One communication was sent to Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor, though that message has not been fully released.
Complicating public understanding is the Department of Defense’s decision — described in local coverage as the “Department of War” — to classify Livelsberger’s full manifesto.
LVMPD has said that the manifesto is under DoD control and that the document itself “does not record any public business,” framing it as evidence collected during an investigation rather than a public record. That choice leaves big gaps: investigators and the public are left to parse a handful of notes and circumstantial details rather than a complete statement of motive.
Personnel and personal turmoil are part of the narrative. Livelsberger, a Green Beret with service dating to 2006 and deployment to Afghanistan in 2009, had reportedly been on leave from an assignment in Germany.
Sources told reporters he left Colorado Springs after a domestic breakup shortly after Christmas; his wife had ended the relationship amid accusations of infidelity. Within days he had rented the Cybertruck via a peer-to-peer app, driven to Las Vegas, and executed the act.
Multiple federal and military agencies — including the Army Criminal Investigation Division, the ATF and the FBI — were involved in the after-action and investigative work. Their involvement underscores the hybrid nature of the case: violent crime, possible political symbolism, and the involvement of an active-duty special operations soldier all converge.
Until the withheld manifesto is declassified or otherwise released, investigators must rely on the scraps the public can see: an explosive spectacle, a wounded lobby and a soldier’s cryptic justification that calls what he did a “wake up call.” The unanswered questions remain stark: why did a decorated Green Beret choose spectacle over warning, and how should a democracy respond when a citizen — sworn to defend it — weaponizes performance as protest?
