White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday that it’s “too early” to say whether federal law enforcement officials could have done more to prevent Sunday’s shooting in Orlando.
But Earnest also said it’s appropriate for the FBI to study whether agents missed signs in its previous two investigations into the man responsible for Sunday’s mass murder at a gay night club in Orland, Fla.
“I think that what the FBI has done is the prudent thing,” he said about Director James Comey’s announcement that the current investigation will examine its previous probes of 29-year-old Omar Mateen, whom Comey revealed was under FBI scrutiny in 2013 and again in 2014.
“The FBI followed all the rules and procedures on the books for how an investigation like this is supposed to be conducted,” Earnest said. “The question is, are those rules and procedures insufficient?”
“That question merits a reconsideration of how that individual was treated and how that investigation was conducted,” Earnest said.
“One of the particular risks with radicalization is that it can happen in a very compressed time period, which is what makes it so difficult to counter,” Earnest said, adding that federal officials are “dealing in a world of limited resources.”
“The question is: What more can we do to prevent that kind of threat from turning into a violent terrorist?” Earnest said, echoing Comey.
Comey said efforts to prevent “lone-wolf” attacks, as Sunday’s appears to be, are a struggle.
“Our work is very challenging,” Comey said. “We are looking for needles in a nationwide haystack … that is hard work.”
