explosives aboard and a legion flight from lehigh valley from pennsylvania to florida. evan perez joins us now from stanford, florida. evan, who is this guy? he s 40 years old. his name is matt mott free. and he was flying, anderson, from lehigh valley airport, which is in northeastern pennsylvania on a flight to orlando. according to the fbi, he checked a bag and in the routine screening that was happening by the tsa, they found explosives in this checked bag. according to the fbi, this is what they found they found powder. that was in a plastic wrap. they found fuses. the powder appears to be from commercial grade fireworks. and so, the question is, what was he doing with this? the airport tried to page him. while he was still at the airport he left. and he was later arrested later that evening on monday by the fbi. the court documents that were released today by the u.s. attorney in philadelphia, don t mention any indication of extremism or his ties to terrorist groups
to look for those sorts of discrepancies as well. so, every place where this gentleman could have gotten caught at the airport in the airport process seems to have stood up and worked as intended, which is definitely a good sign. and mary, what damage could these items have done to a plane had it ignited? what does that say to you about intent, if anything? if the items had ignited, it could do great damage to a plane. and the fire in a cargo hold could bring down the plane. it could put a wall in the plane. terrorists not saying this gentleman ones was one, the accused but explosives correctly placed in an airplane can do enough to bring the plane down. however, the placement and the items in the bag does not suggest that any of them were connected with any detonation device. there was no altimeter device. there was no timing device. and there was no trigger device, sometimes linked to cell phones or anything. so, there wasn t any device that could set them off. however, that
aircraft. obviously these are very serious charges. he s due in court, again, in northeastern pennsylvania tomorrow. and evan perez. joining us now senior law enforcement analyst, andrew mccabe, also mary xi of o, former inspector general of the education department an avocation aviation analyst. and john miller. john, what more are you hearing about this? well, as evan pointed to the first thing the fbi did after arresting this guy on monday. was to do a complete scrub. so, no indication of any leanings connections to foreign terrorists, no indications of any leanings or connections to domestic terrorist groups, white supremacists, neo-nazis, any of that stuff. every indication, anderson, from the local police, who know the suspect very well for multiple contacts over the years that he is just a local