U.S. President Donald Trump has criticized the FBI for missing warning signs shown by Florida school shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz before the Feb. 14 shooting that left 17 dead.
The FBI has acknowledged that it mishandled a January tip from an anonymous caller who said Cruz was at risk of killing people, saying that it didn’t follow proper protocol by forwarding the phoned-in tip to the FBI Miami field office.
Both the FBI and the Justice Department have said they’re investigating why the tip wasn’t properly handled.
READ MORE: FBI failed to properly investigate tip on suspect Nikolas Cruz
But President Trump has presented his own theory, suggesting that the FBI was too distracted with trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign to spot the warning signs.
Trump also took aim at his national security adviser H.R. McMaster, after McMaster said Saturday that evidence of Russia’s election meddling is now “incontrovertible” and beyond dispute.
McMaster’s assessment came after special counsel Robert Mueller delivered a 37-page indictment on Friday laying bare the details of a Russian plot designed in part to benefit Trump’s White House run.
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Trump has seized on the fact that the Russian “information warfare” effort began in 2014, before he announced his campaign, to assert that no collusion took place.
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The Trump administration has repeatedly alleged that the FBI is biased against the president. Trump overrode strong objections by declassifying a Republican memo alleging an abuse of surveillance powers by the FBI in its investigation into Russian collusion.
However, Trump has blocked the release of a Democrat-prepared memo that looks to rebut Republican assertions of bias.
— With files from the Associated Press
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