The Justice Department has abandoned its legal case against releasing 911 calls from the mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub in June, multiple sources reported Wednesday evening.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation has determined that the specific records at issue are no longer part of its active and ongoing criminal investigations into the shootings at Pulse nightclub,” U.S. attorney’s office spokesman William Daniels said in a statement.
Following the killing of 49 people by gunman Omar Mateen, two dozen media outlets demanded the 911 tapes. The U.S. attorney’s office and FBI had requested the recordings not be shared with the public and press.
Initial accounts of the calls indicated Mateen had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State when talking with the dispatcher. Conservatives mulled over whether the Obama administration tried to keep the transcripts private because the allegedly terrorism-related shooting did not fit Democrats’ narrative about gun control.
“We’re gratified to see that the FBI is no longer presenting impediments to the release of the 911 recordings,” Rachel Fugate, an attorney for the media groups, told the Associated Press. “But it’s taken three months, a lawsuit, a trip to federal court and a return to state court to get there.”
