It appears Omar Mateen had “multiple motivations” when he decided to target Pulse nightclub in Orlando and open fire on innocent people in the worst shooting massacre in US history.
Transcripts of the terrorist’s calls during the attack are set to be released later today, but not everything will be made public.
Multiple media outlets are reporting that the part of the transcript that won’t be released is when Mateen pledges allegiance to ISIS.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on ‘Meet the Press’: “What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this individual’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups and further his propaganda…We will hear him talk about some of those things, but we’re not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance and that.”
Fox News reports that “Critics blasted the move by the administration, which has rejected branding terrorist acts as motivated by radical Islam and has sought to paint the Orlando attack as a gun control issue.”
Mateen reportedly declared allegiance to ISIS leader al -Baghdadi in the middle of the massacre, and before he was killed by police following a three-hour long standoff.
The FBI is trying to put together the pieces to determine what led Mateen to this particular club.
Mateen reportedly did not mention the LGBT community in any of the three calls that night with hostage negotiators. Lynch also pointed out –what has already been widely covered in the media — that it was Latin night at the club and they’re also looking at the possibility that Mateen intentionally went to Pulse on that particular night for several reasons.
Lynch also spoke on the Sunday morning talk shows about Mateen’s wife. Noor Salman has not yet been arrested, but Lynch says it’s too early to talk about what charges, if any, will be filed against her.
Lynch says they don’t have any information that Mateen was being directed by terrorists overseas. She says over the course of time he was “consuming radical jihadist information online and becoming radicalized here in the US.”
This investigation is still very fluid and so they are not releasing everything in the transcripts, but Lynch says, “The goal is to be as transparent as possible.”
Investigators are going back and looking at everything they did with Mateen before the attack, to see what changes could have been made.
“We are trying to re-create the days, the weeks, the months of this killer’s life before this attack,” Lynch said. “And we are also asking those people who had contact with him to come forward and give us that information as well.”
© 2016 Bright Mountain Media, Inc.
All rights reserved. The content of this webpage may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written consent of Bright Mountain Media, Inc. which may be contacted at info@brightmountainmedia.com, ticker BMTM.
