Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is asking Facebook to give a Senate committee all the information it has from the five Facebook accounts belonging to the shooter in Orlando’s deadly massacre.
In a Wednesday letter to Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, says his staff learned that Omar Mateen was searching “Pulse Orlando” and “shooting” on Sunday.
“It is my understanding that Omar Mateen used Facebook before and during the attack to search for and post terrorism-related content,” Johnson wrote in the two-page letter.
Also on Sunday before the shooting, Mateen “apparently posted ‘America and Russa stop bombing the Islamic state,'” and pledged his “alliance” with Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Johnson wrote.
Mateen also used Facebook to search information on the San Bernardino shooting, as well as conducting frequent searches on “local law enforcement and FBI,” including searching for specific law enforcement offices.
On Sunday, Mateen shot and killed 49 people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in what is being called the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. He later died in a shootout with police.
“In a final post, Mateen apparently wrote, ‘In the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic state in the usa,'” Johnson wrote.
Johnson, a first-term senator, gave Zuckerberg until June 29 to turn over all activity logs, timeline information, messages, photos and posts related to the five Facebook accounts associated with Mateen.
Read the full letter here.
