his second consecutive presidential daily briefing, he tweeted this. mr. trump was tweeting from florida. his daughter headed that way from new york. she and her family were harassed by a passenger who disagrees with her father s politics. the passenger tweeted his intention to confront ms. trump and was so aggressive he was removed. jetblue said in a statement, quote that flight manifest shrunk but theç trump team grew today. in addition to naming sean spicer as press secretary, three our communication staffers from the campaign and transition were given similar jobs at the white house.
239 people on board. now, phillip wood, an ibm executive and 50-year-old father of two is one of the three american passengers on that flight manifest. we now have a statement from his family, which reads in part, phillip wood was a man of god, a man of honor and integrity. we ask for your prayers, not only for ourselves, but for all involved during this difficult time. as a family, we re sticking together through christ to get through this. and it is, of course, a terribly difficult time for all the families of the passengers. wood s brother, tom, also spoke to our nbc affiliate in dallas, kxas. just shock, you know? this kind of thing doesn t happen, you know? like, this shouldn t be happening. this shouldn t happen to us. he was excited to be moving kuala lumpur, you know, he was telling me how beautiful it was. he was my hero, my friend, and we were very close. so it s tough. it s tough times. and as investigators search for clues to what happened here
illegal passports are common in asia. let s begin with catherine herridge. what do you know about this irannan? as u.s. destroyers and surveillance aircraft scour the region we re told the flight manifest for the flight has been run against what is known as the tide database, the broad babes babes compiled by the u.s. government which includes known and suspected terrorists and there have been no red flags. investigators had the images of they passengers who used the stolen passports from the security checkpoint video cameras and think they have a positive i.d. on one of the men. there s now outreach to form intelligence agencies to verify the name. one of the men appears to be from west africa, neither described as being of asia
there s also word from the mosque that the older brother went to the boston area where he had outbursts at least two times during sermons, which considered unthinkable that you would pipe out during a sermon, disrespectful. twice he had incidents at his own mosque. that s right. i think we are going to circle back to his six-month trip to russia, because apparently even russian intelligence told the fbi, we re a little concerned about this guy. the fbi questioned him, questioned neighbors, determined he was no threat and no follow-up needed. they essentially dropped the ball. they diplomat even know he had gone back to russia for the six-month trip because his name was misspelled in the flight manifest. which means they really lost
it was packed. there was a small cabin. there was nothing that stood out. this was before the days we even cared about those things. i took a long nap. i d shot all night. and forgot about it in its entirety. 9/11 happened. about a year later, i think, i go to the mailbox, i get a envelope from the attorneys general in the state of maryland and in it they re notifying me that i have shown up on a list of the public defender of zacarias moussaoui s people to be deposed. i think it s an april fool s joke. what is this, yeah. an april fool s joke. i call my attorney. larry stein. larry stein calls. he says i ll get right back to you. five minutes later. and i can tell by the way he says hello when he picks up the phone it s not good news. and he says you were on a dry run, they were all on the plane with you. they have the flight manifest. and this guy this lunatic wants to talk to you.