Come on, Comey. Are you serious man?
Even though
Attorney General Loretta Lynch and
former Attorney General Eric Holder have each called the Charleston massacre of nine members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston clear cases of "domestic terrorism," FBI Director James Comey, for the second time, continues to express his hesitancy to label it as anything other than a hate crime.
Mind you, when a black man walked into a conservative charity with a gun and some chicken sandwiches and was stopped at the door by security, the FBI called him a terrorist and the Justice Department charged and helped convict him for terrorism. He never fired a single bullet.
Speaking Thursday to Ryan Reilly of Huffington Post, FBI Director Comey continued to express hesitancy in calling the shooting terrorism.
Before the manifesto surfaced online, Comey said he was unsure whether the shooting was a "political act.” An FBI spokesman said Comey's comments were made while the situation was "still fluid." But now that Roof's motivations are more clear, Comey said he's still not sure.
"I don't know yet," Comey said Thursday, when The Huffington Post asked him whether the Charleston shooting was an act of terrorism. "I was asked about that a day or so after and said that, based on what I knew at that point, I didn't see it fitting the definition. Since then, we're found the so-called manifesto online, so I know the investigators and prosecutors are looking at it through the lens of hate crime, through the lens, potentially, of terrorism."
Could a cultural gap exist here such that two African-American attorney generals clearly and unmistakably see this shooting as terrorism while the white FBI director appears to be truly struggling to accept it as such?
It's preposterous at this point. Not only did Dylann Roof leave behind a racist manifesto clearly expressing his intentions, he deliberately left a living witness to do the same. He fully and completely intended to cause harm and strike terror in a community—and was successful with his goals, but Director Comey refuses to see it.