White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley clarified what issue areas President Donald Trump will focus on after a school massacre in Parkland, Florida Wednesday.
“No question there was a systematic failure at the F.B.I. They were alerted about this individual. People knew of this individual. Something like 30 visits from local law enforcement to this shooter’s home. Nobody did anything. That’s the issue here,” Gidley told Fox News Tuesday, adding “time for talk is over. We have to get things in place to protect the American people and this president wants to do just that.”
He continued, “It’s obvious the F.B.I. Messed up. Director WRAY took responsibility for that. It’s unacceptable when you look at all the information they had on this particular shooter,” elaborating ” the F.B.I. At some levels knew it but for whatever reason it didn’t make it up the chain of command for somebody to do something.”
Gidley’s remarks echo Trump’s own weekend tweet casting blame on the FBI saying
Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign – there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2018
The FBI on Friday admitted, “On January 5, 2018, a person close to Nikolas Cruz contacted the FBI’s Public Access Line (PAL) tipline to report concerns about him,” adding, “Under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life. The information then should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami Field Office, where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken.”