On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends First,” Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) reacted to reports that the individual suspected of attacking New York police officers with a machete in Times Square was on the FBI’s radar by saying that the FBI has spent too much time going after people for political reasons while failing to keep appropriate tabs on real threats.
Tenney stated, “[H]ere’s the FBI, busy attacking President Trump, not really keeping us safe, going after all kinds of political enemies, not actual people on the streets. Here’s a guy on the terror watch list that slipped through the cracks. I wonder how many others are out there all across the nation and particularly in New York City that the NYPD has been unable to coordinate with the FBI to stop.”
She added that if the FBI wasn’t spending resources on school board meetings and Twitter suppression, “I think they certainly would have had some information. Obviously, they’re doing a lot of surveillance on social media, whether it’s Twitter or Facebook. This young man was radicalized, obviously — probably through social media, because where else would he get information about the Taliban and Afghanistan?”
Tenney also said the FBI is “focused on Twitter, focused on social media, not looking at the people that they need to look at, the true criminals, not the people out there who are political enemies.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett