Via the Free Beacon. A few weeks ago, after he canceled an appearance in Toronto, he claimed it was because “his travel privileges are being reviewed.” Wrote Khan, “This turn of events is not just of deep concern to me but to all my fellow Americans who cherish our freedom to travel abroad.”

Fast-forward two weeks and there’s a new explanation: Khan wasn’t barred from traveling, he simply didn’t want to gamble with Trump’s new regulations. Even though, as a U.S. citizen, there’s basically nothing the feds can do to stop him from coming or going, especially to a country like Canada with minimal barriers to entry for Americans. Hmmmm:

Finally, in a Friday afternoon email to this reporter, Khan explains: “I did not want to go through the hassle of uncertain rules and capricious implementation.”

Khan also expressed his concern about Muslim profiling with the local bar association.

“Seeing things like Muhammed Ali Jr. being detained. Muslim but American citizens being detained at the border.”

That’s lawyer Lloyd Snook, who explains:

“Basically, there is no Fourth Amendment protection at the border.”

Ali Jr did run into a hassle recently in traveling, not once but twice. Allegedly, on February 7th, Customs and Border Protection detained him for about an hour and a half and reportedly asked him questions like, “Where did you get your name from?” and “Are you Muslim?” A CBP spokesman said that questions about religion can come up in a secondary screening but aren’t routine, and couldn’t be asked routinely of Muslim travelers given the sheer number who are traveling on a given day. (The second incident, which occurred in early March, involved Ali being quizzed by TSA about his identity and may have had to do with a snafu regarding the particular form of ID that he initially offered them.) Khan’s speech in Toronto wasn’t scheduled until March 7th, weeks after the Ali incident went public. If he was afraid of being pulled aside by CBP and asked about his religion upon reentry into the U.S., why didn’t he say that initially in making his excuses to Canada for canceling the speech?

And given the activist role he’s chosen for himself, why wouldn’t he want to risk an encounter with CBP or TSA as an object lesson in how Trump’s travel policies are supposedly unfair to Muslims? There’s precisely zero chance that Khizr Khan, Gold Star dad and renowned Trump critic, would be significantly delayed in traveling to or from the U.S. One look at the media eruption that followed the cancellation of his Toronto speech should prove that. If Khan got pulled aside and quizzed by CBP on “where he got his name from,” it’d be front-page news, the White House would be scrambling to do damage control, and Khan would have an irresistible “it happened to me, it can happen to you” story with which to begin his speeches. Temperaments vary among activists, of course — some may have a higher threshold for confrontation with authority than others — but given that any confrontation at the border would have been resolved in Khan’s favor and that it would have caused Trump considerable political pain on a matter of concern to Khan himself, it’s hard to understand why he wouldn’t chance it. Which raises the question: Is this new explanation the truth or is there a third explanation for why he bailed on Canada on the way?