AG Barr announced a few minutes ago that the mass shooting that occurred at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida was indeed a ‘terrorist attack’ and explains below:
Here’s more from The Hill:
Attorney General William Barr announced Monday that a December shooting at a Pensacola, Fla., military base that left three dead was an “act of terrorism.”
Barr made the comments while delivering the results from a month-long investigation into the attack, which was carried out by a member of the Royal Saudi Air Force who had enrolled in the Naval Air Station Pensacola training program.
Barr said that Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani killed three U.S. sailors and wounded eight others after entering the building grounds of the Naval station on Dec. 6. Alshamrani was shot and killed by police amid the massacre.
“The evidence shows that the shooter was motivated by jihadist ideology,” Barr said. “During the course of the investigation, we learned that the shooter posted a message on social media on Sept. 11 of last year that said: ‘the countdown has begun.’ Over Thanksgiving weekend, he visited the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. He also posted other anti-American, anti-Israeli, and jihadi messages on social media, and did so two hours before his attack at the naval base.”
They also noted that 21 other Saudi nationals were pulled out of the program by Saudi Arabia after they were found to have had jihadist material and child pornography:
WTSP – As investigators began digging into his background and trying to uncover his motive for the Dec. 6 attack, flight training for another 175 Saudi students was suspended.
Now, at the request of the Saudi government, 21 will be expelled from the United States, according to Barr. The Justice Department says they all had “derogatory materials.”
According to investigators, 17 had jihadi or other anti-American content on their social media accounts, according to investigators. Fifteen – including some of the 17 above – had “some kind of contact with child pornography,” according to the DOJ.
One had a “significant number of those images,” Barr said.
The attorney general said U.S. attorneys reviewed the information and decided there was not enough evidence for federal prosecutions, but the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia determined the 21 cadets “demonstrated conduct unbecoming an officer.”
Barr also noted that they had fixed the phones of the terrorist, the ones he sought to destroy by shooting them, but that they are currently locked and so far the FBI has been unable to get Apple’s help to unlock them. They are looking to remedy that situation.
There’s a lot more in the video above…