Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the terrorist threat is “evolving” from “a time of the large-scale planned al Qaeda-style attacks to the encouragement of lone wolves.”
During an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd, Lynch said, “We have to evolve as well and we are. We are reviewing everything about this case but also past cases to see what are the common threads.” (RELATED: Loretta Lynch Urges Muslim Parents To Contact Feds If Their Children Are Bullied)
Todd, referring the San Bernardino terrorist attack, asked Lynch, “Why do you think the mother… apparently didn’t know they had a cache of weapons, didn’t know they had a pipe bomb factory in their garage?”
“You know, I can’t speak that facet of the investigation. Obviously it’s something we’re looking at very, very closely and we appreciate everyone who’s come forward with information about that,” Lynch explained. (RELATED: Shooter’s Father: Farook Told Me He Supported ISIS, Al Baghdadi)
“So I can’t characterize the knowledge of any of the other witnesses in the case. What I will say is that this indicates the evolving nature of the threat that we are seeing. We have come from a time of the large-scale planned al Qaeda-style attacks to the encouragement of lone wolves– Fort Hood, Chattanooga– to the encouragement people to act on their own.”
Todd followed up, “But, we’ve been hearing this for six years, that the threat has changed and it looks like we have no new ways to stop this threat. I mean, do we have to just accept the idea that this is the way we have to live now? Accept the idea that a lone wolf inspired by an ISIS website could just mow people down?”
“I don’t think we should ever accept the idea that someone can come along and take away our safety and freedom,” Lynch insisted. “We have to do everything we can to prevent that. And that is really a multifaceted approach. We’ve evolved a lot since 9/11 also in terms of law enforcement capabilities, intelligence capabilities, military, counterterrorism. We have been watching this threat evolve for some time.” (RELATED: Hillary Won’t Say ‘Radical Islam’ Because It ‘Sounds Like We Are Declaring War Against A Religion’)
“We are now at a point where because we, in fact, have been successful at stopping a number of plots. The threat has evolved. We do see these lone wolf actors. We do see these encouragements for troubled individuals to pick up a gun and act out of this ideology,” Lynch claimed. (RELATED: Hillary Clinton: ‘We’re Not Winning’ Against ISIS)
“Again, not sure which one they picked in this case despite the media accounts but we do see this. We have to evolve as well and we are,” Lynch said. “We are reviewing everything about this case but also past cases to see what are the common threads. And when we look back at the terrorism investigation since 9/11 — and there have been numerous ones — one of the things that does come to the fore, Chuck, is that in a number of cases when we look back at these individuals, Someone did notice a change. Someone did notice a substantive, significant change.” (RELATED: Ted Cruz: Barack Obama Is ‘An Apologist For Radical Islamic Terrorists’)