One of the San Bernardino shooters came to the United States with the intention of carrying out a terrorist attack, FBI director James Comey told Congress on Wednesday.
Comey said he doesn’t know if a terrorist group arranged the marriage between the two attackers, but said that Tashfeen Malik had jihadist goals as early as 2013. “The intelligence indicates that she was [radicalized] before she connected with the other killer and came here,” he said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this morning.
Comey’s revelation comes in the midst of a debate over President Obama’s pledge to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States, as lawmakers and governors question the efficacy of Department of Homeland Security screening procedures. It rattled even Democratic lawmakers on the committee who have defended Obama’s policies.
“After this hearing today, every American is going to be asking the question: How did this woman come in on a visa . . . if she was talking publicly (again, we’ll get into ‘privately’ in the classified briefing) about jihad?” said New York senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader-in-waiting. “Shouldn’t that be somehow tied into our visa program?”