Get ready for the GOP and the
limited-information Trump supporters to condemn the Robert Mueller
investigation and the FBI for ignoring their duty to protect Americans. They
will claim the FBI and its agents were too blindsided trying to pin a “collusion”
badge on Trump - and in doing so they missed a chance to stop a real crime.
A report has been released
that shows the FBI was warned about Nikolaus Cruz in January, but they did
nothing about it.
On January 5th, over a month before Wednesday’s
shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, the
bureau received a warning from someone close to the teenager that they were
concerned about Cruz and that he might carry out an attack on the school. The
tipster, identified only as an adult who knew the gunman, contacted the FBI public
tip line and told “about
Cruz’s gun ownership, his desire to kill people, his erratic behavior, and even
disturbing social media posts.”
Red flags
should have gone up and a warning klaxon begun blaring but the call center
never passed on any information, according to a federal law enforcement
official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The bureau knew the identity
of the tipster and the tip involved a threat to life, meaning it should have
been passed on. The tipster did not describe an attack plan by Cruz with a time
and place, but it did provide specific information on him and warning signs
that any law enforcement official would have acted on.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, hoping to win back Trump’s trust
and loyalty, said he is ordering deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to
review the bureau’s handling of the matter. “It is now clear that the warning
signs were there and tips to the FBI were missed,” Sessions said in a
statement. “We see the tragic consequences of those failures.”
There’s the set up for - “if the FBI hadn’t been distracted by the
probe into Russian collusion, they would have easily connected the dots.”
This will play right in to Trump’s hands that if the FBI had not thrown all their agents
and staff at the Russian investigation, which everyone knows is just fake news,
made up, a witch hunt, a scheme by Democrats to cover up their loss in the 2016
election, and a waste of taxpayers’ money, they would have been able to nab Cruz
before he gunned down 17 students and wounded 14 others on Valentine’s Day.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement “We are still
investigating the facts. I am committed to getting to the bottom of what
happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for
responding to information that we receive from the public.
But again, the lapse will be blamed on so much of the FBI’s
attention diverted to a useless probe into Russian hacking, Russian
collusion, those innocent meetings with Russian agents- the Russian ambassador-Russian
Bank CEOs-and Russian lawyers by members of Trump’s campaign. When it comes to all the obvious Russian collusion links, Trump and his supporters just say "Move along. Nothing to see here."
It will not be surprising if Trump, his GOP sycophants, or the
far-right fringe call for Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray (maybe even
Jeff Sessions) to step down in light of this FBI failure. Then there will most
likely be a demand to end the Russian investigation because Americans are being
slaughtered due to FBI negligence from looking into all those false leads about Russians meddling in our 2016 election. It will be much easier in the future to also
point to FBI neglect the next time ANY tragedy happens that might have been
stopped if only those law enforcement agents had been available to spot the warning signs.
This is how democracy’s head is held under water until it drowns.
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