FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday that Tashfeen Malik, the female suspect in last week’s San Bernardino shooting, was radicalized before she came to the U.S. on a fiancee visa.
“So far with the data we collected, she was [radicalized] before she connected with the other killer,” Comey said during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday morning. He was referring to Syed Farook, the American-born husband of Malik who joined her in killing 14 people during a Christmas party last week.
The FBI director said a subsequent search of the home Malik and Farook shared by reporters during a live broadcast struck him as “strange,” but noted the televised ransacking was not illegal.
“The way it works is, we get a search warrant … our forensic experts were in that residence for over 24 hours,” he explained. “Once we’ve exhausted that examination, we board that place up and make it secure.”
“The part I can’t explain is why the landlord for the place allowed the boards to be pried off,” he added.
Comey assured lawmakers “there was nothing else to be gained from that scene” before members of the media entered the house shortly after investigators finished their survey of the property.
“What happened next was strange,” he admitted. “But we had done our work in a careful, responsible way.”
Comey faced a barrage of questions about the intelligence weaknesses that allowed Malik and Farook to escape detection despite being “radicalized” for at least two years before they mounted an ideologically-motivated attack on Farook’s workplace.
The reporters who sifted through the suspects’ belongings on live television last week were hit with widespread criticism from viewers and pundits who questioned whether their actions could have compromised the future of the FBI’s open probe.
