Florida Governor Rick Scott is calling on FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to resign for the agency’s failure to take action over warnings that the Parkland school shooter was a powder keg waiting to go off.
“The FBI’s failure to take action against this killer is unacceptable,” Scott said in a statement released Friday afternoon on February 16. “The FBI has admitted that they were contacted last month by a person who called to inform them of Cruz’s ‘desire to kill people,’ and ‘the potential of him conducting a school shooting.'”
“Seventeen innocent people are dead and acknowledging a mistake isn’t going to cut it. An apology will never bring these 17 Floridians back to life or comfort the families who are in pain. The families will spend a lifetime wondering how this could happen, and an apology will never give them the answers they desperately need,” the statement continued.
Scott is alluding to reports that the FBI had been warned ahead of time that the Parkland school shooter was making troubling posts on social media.
According to reports, the Bureau was notified in September after a YouTube user named Nikolas Cruz left a comment about wanting to be a “professional school shooter.”
Robert Lasky, FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Miami field office, claimed that the warning didn’t contain enough information for the agency to track down the person making the comments.
But Gov. Scott says that the FBI’s failure to follow up on the tip has damaged the agency.
“We constantly promote ‘see something, say something,’ and a courageous person did just that to the FBI. And the FBI failed to act,” Scott concluded. “‘See something, say something’ is an incredibly important tool, and people must have confidence in the follow through from law enforcement. The FBI director needs to resign.”
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered a review of the FBI and Justice Department procedures to determine if the Bureau broke protocols in failing to respond to the tip.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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