CNN Panel Slam FBI for Rushing to Conclude Boulder Attack Is Terrorism: Makes Them ‘Look So Juvenile’

Dean: “I believe they are both with us. Andrew, let‘s go first to you. What kind of is standing out to me, just in terms of a law enforcement perspective right now, is that the local authorities are saying one thing, and the FBI is saying something slightly different.”
McCabe: “Yeah, that‘s never — that‘s never a great start. I think that the press conference that we saw, one thing was abundantly clear, is they — the local authorities, and I‘m not sure we got the name of that person who was speaking, he seems to be a chief or somebody in charge there.”
Yes. Same, yes.
McCabe: “Yeah, he is really being very, very careful. And I think that‘s the right approach at this point. They don‘t have a clear idea that they‘re willing to communicate to the rest of the world yet of even exactly what happened, who was there, how they were attacked with fire, and what the purpose or the motive of that attack might have been. So he was very, very clear to say that they‘re not drawing any conclusions about terrorism or anything else at this point. They‘re trying to figure out who they have in custody and what that person might have done and who he — who he was trying to hurt with that action. So it‘s hard to imagine that the FBI has more or better information at this point to kind of rush out with the conclusion within, like, 10 minutes after we all started hearing about this that it‘s a targeted act of terror. It may very well be, but most of the time you try to be very careful about attaching that label to an attack until you have solid evidence that indicates a motive that would qualify as terrorism, like an act intended to intimidate a population or to change the impact — change the direction of government, that sort of thing. Those are all parts of the terrorism statute. So I think we go with what we‘re hearing from the folks who are closest to the event at this point, and they do have a lot of work to do, but they seem to be on top of it. And we‘ll hear from them again tonight, apparently.”
Dean: “Yeah. I mean, Juliette, that was the other thing, is we got really, from those local authorities, broad strokes on this. Really scary. And as he said, not okay, not appropriate. This is — this is devastating to any community. This is — this is not what we — what anybody wants in the United States of America or anywhere. But, again, just broad strokes of what they know, which doesn‘t seem like, to Andy‘s point there, like they‘re willing to say that they‘re confident in knowing a lot right now.”
KAYYEM: “Right. That was — I‘m going to be quite direct here. The FBI director and deputy director got way ahead of where the local police were. The language that the FBI used in their tweets included words like ‘violence,’ ‘targeted terrorism’ and ‘violent.’ They got ahead of where the local police knew where the investigation was. I know — I want to just make it clear here. This could have been an anti-Semitic attack, which is terrifying, in particular for people in the community. We don‘t know that because the Boulder Police officer, at least according to the Boulder Police officer, they‘re not sure if the people injured were people at the the the Jewish rally, the Jewish gathering. Now, maybe others in organizations know that. We know ADL and other organizations have been out on this. Maybe they have more evidence. But one of the reasons why, you know, Andrew and I are careful in situations like this is because lots of people are saying lots of things. But when the Boulder police chief comes out and says, ‘We don‘t have two plus two equaling four yet,’ in other words, it‘s this obviously an anti-Semitic attack, and the victims were obviously part of that group, therefore we‘re not calling it terrorism, it adds a lot of — it‘s not — it‘s not good for the community. It‘s not good for the potentially targeted community. It makes law enforcement look disorganized, and it makes the FBI look so Juvenile. Like, why are you getting ahead of the police chief who says, ‘I don‘t know what this is?’ It sounds — maybe it is what we all think it is, but maybe it‘s not. And he has no incentive to get it wrong. So we‘re going to take a step back, not be responsive to tweets by two heads of the FBI who don‘t have a long history in local law enforcement, and we will wait and hope it isn‘t what we all worry it is. And if it is, then there‘ll be an investigation. But that was — that‘s like nothing I‘d ever seen before. You normally — actually, Andrew knows this. You normally get the local people getting way ahead on motive and the FBI saying, ‘We don‘t have it yet.’ You now have the opposite here. And until we know that the victims were members of that — of the Jewish event, we don‘t have the nexus. And I will believe the Denver police chief that they do not have that nexus now. And if they do, I will be the first one out here saying that that is a hate crime. But until we do, we all need to to not follow the FBI‘s tweets.”