The man who allegedly shot and wounded two Jews in Los Angeles last month in a suspected hate crime was on an FBI watch list — but may have been out on bail because District Attorney George Gascón was unaware of it.
As Breitbart News reported last month, Jaime Tran, 28, was arrested on suspicion of having shot two Jewish men near local synagogues in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, sending fear throughout the community.
On Tuesday, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore said that Tran had been on a special FBI list called Guardian, which flags potential terror suspects and other individuals who are thought to pose a threat.
But Gascón, the radical prosecutor elected with the help of millions of dollars in campaign spending by left-wing billionaire George Soros, said that he had been unaware that the FBI had place Tran on the Guardian list.
Had he known, he suggested, prosecutors may not have let Tran be released after an arrest for a gun charge.
The Los Angeles Times reported:
In charging Tran with the gun crime, L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón said his office had not been aware of Tran’s prior hate-related actions, and that Tran did not have a criminal history.
Gascón said no one informed the prosecutor in the gun case about Tran’s threats to former classmates and that prosecutors never received a request to charge Tran with the threats — all of which could have led to some intervention, including rescinding Tran’s bail or obtaining a plea deal that included mental health services.
“The dots were never connected for us,” he said. “This is the first time I am hearing this was on the FBI’s radar.”
Gascón recently suspended a prosecutor for misgendering a convicted sex offender and suspected murderer.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.