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Attorney General Loretta Lynch Visits Orlando Attorney General Loretta Lynch Visits Orlando
(about 4 hours later)
ORLANDO, Fla. — Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch visited this grieving city on Tuesday, nine days after the massacre at the Pulse nightclub and one day after an F.B.I. official said that the agency’s inquiry could take years. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch visited the grieving city of Orlando, Fla., on Tuesday, nine days after the massacre at a gay nightclub, and promised emergency financial aid and other support for law enforcement agencies and victims’ families, even as another federal agency denied a request for assistance, prompting an angry response from Florida’s governor.
The Justice Department said that Ms. Lynch, who is expected to address reporters in the afternoon, met with victims of the June 12 attack, as well as emergency personnel. Ms. Lynch called the meeting with victims’ relatives “very difficult,” The Associated Press reported. Ms. Lynch visited people wounded in the attack by Omar Mateen at Pulse nightclub and family members of victims, and met with local law enforcement officials and federal prosecutors and investigators. “I am so inspired by the strength and the resilience of the survivors and their loved ones,” she said at a news conference.
She was also briefed by A. Lee Bentley III, the United States attorney for the Middle District of Florida, and other law enforcement officials, The A.P. reported, including the prosecutors assigned to the investigation. She offered few responses to the many questions that remain about the case, like whether Mr. Mateen’s wife might face charges, how many shots were fired at the nightclub, and the politically charged matter of whether the F.B.I., which investigated Mr. Mateen in 2013 and again in 2014, should have taken action against him. All of the issues remain under investigation, Ms. Lynch said, but she indicated that at least some answers would be coming.
“I think there’s a real benefit to having her here to see everything firsthand,” Mr. Bentley said, according to The A.P. Though the F.B.I. has defended its actions, the department is looking into its history with Mr. Mateen “to determine what if anything we could have done better,” she said. When asked if any of the 49 people killed and 53 wounded were mistakenly shot by the police in a gun battle with Mr. Mateen, she said, “It will be part of the information made available to you,” but did not say when.
President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. visited the city last week. The attorney general’s trip comes as Orlando moves, slowly, toward a vague sense of normalcy, with businesses near the popular gay nightclub being allowed to open for the first time since the assault. A temporary fence that was erected around the nightclub has been removed, according to media reports. The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Monday denied a request from Gov. Rick Scott for $5 million in federal assistance related to the shooting. In a letter to Mr. Scott, the agency administrator, W. Craig Fugate, wrote that the request failed to explain how the incident was beyond the capability of the state and local governments, and did not demonstrate how the money could help protect lives and property.
The Obama administration has denied an emergency request from Florida for $5 million in federal funds to respond to the Pulse nightclub massacre, a decision Gov. Rick Scott called “incredibly disappointing.” “It is unthinkable that President Obama does not define this as an emergency,” Mr. Scott, a Republican, said in a statement. “We are committing every state resource possible to help the victims and the community heal, and we expect the same from the federal government.” The governor’s office said it would appeal the decision.
In a letter Monday, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, told the governor that the request, made the day after the shooting, had been denied, because the appeal did not explain how the incident was beyond the capability of the state and local governments. The request also did not demonstrate how federal funds could help protect lives and property, the letter said. A FEMA spokesman, Rafael Lemaitre, said that when mass shootings occurred in Connecticut, California and Virginia, the states did not request emergency funding, in part because the dangers had ended fairly quickly. “It is extremely uncommon to make a specific request like this for an event that is not ongoing,” he wrote in an email.
“An emergency declaration is not appropriate for this incident,” Mr. Fugate wrote in the letter, which was released by the governor’s office. Ms. Lynch said she could not comment on FEMA’s action, but noted that substantial help was on the way from the Department of Justice. The department is making $1 million available to local law enforcement agencies to cover increased expenses like overtime pay, and offering emergency counseling to emergency medical workers who, she said, “carry that weight long after the smoke has cleared.”
“It is unthinkable that President Obama does not define this as an emergency,” Mr. Scott said in a statement. “We are committing every state resource possible to help the victims and the community heal and we expect the same from the federal government.” “We are also making federal emergency funds and victim compensation funding available to cover, for example, family travel expense, medical, mental health expenses and other costs related to this tragedy,” she added.
A spokesman for FEMA, Rafael Lemaitre, said other states where mass shootings occurred, Connecticut, California and Virginia, did not request federal emergency funding. President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. visited the city last week. The attorney general’s trip comes as Orlando moves slowly toward a vague sense of normalcy, with businesses near Pulse being allowed to open for the first time since the assault. A temporary fence that was erected around the nightclub has been removed, according to news reports.
“The only instance in which this administration has received a terrorist-related request for a federal state of emergency was the Boston Marathon bombing, which was an ongoing incident at the time of the request,” Mr. Lemaitre said in an email. “It is extremely uncommon to make a specific request like this for an event that is not ongoing.” The dispute over emergency aid came on the heels of another example of the administration’s being second-guessed for its response to the slaughter here.
Ms. Lynch’s visit here also comes as the Justice Department faces scrutiny for its decisions before and after the attack, which left 49 people dead and 53 wounded. The most recent controversy simmered for part of Monday, when the Justice Department was widely criticized for its initial decision to release only a redacted transcript of the gunman’s call to a 911 operator in Orlando. On Monday, the Justice Department released a partial transcript of Mr. Mateen’s call to a 911 operator while the siege at Pulse was underway, removing the names of the Islamic State and its leader, to whom Mr. Mateen declared his allegiance. Officials said they made the redactions to avoid promoting the group’s propaganda, but the decision was widely criticized, including by the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan. Within hours, the department released the full transcript of the call.
The gunman, Omar Mateen, who was also killed, pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State in that 50-second call, and federal officials said they had sought to withhold the full transcript to deprive Mr. Mateen and terrorist groups of “a publicity platform for hateful propaganda.” But after a burst of outrage that seemed destined to endure, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. published a complete transcript on Monday afternoon. But the department has not released transcripts of two other conversations the gunman had with the police, and just fragments of another. Nor has it made public audio recordings of the calls, which Ms. Lynch said might happen at some point.
“I wanna let you know, I’m in Orlando, and I did the shootings,” Mr. Mateen said, according to the transcript of the call at 2:35 a.m., about 33 minutes after the first reports of gunfire. None of the material released points to Mr. Mateen’s being motivated by hatred of gays, though that is a part of the investigation. Ms. Lynch said it was an act of terrorism and a hate crime. As for conflicting reports about whether the gunman had been a patron of gay clubs, she said, “I’m not able to give you a conclusive answer.”
Asked for his name, Mr. Mateen replied by pledging allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “I know that the L.G.B.T. community in particular has been shaken by this attack,” she said. “It is indeed a cruel irony that a community that is defined almost exclusively by whom they love is so often a target of hate.”
Investigators have said, however, that they do not believe that Mr. Mateen, who was 29, received any specific support from the group.
Law enforcement officials have not released complete transcripts of Mr. Mateen’s calls with crisis negotiators. In the excerpts that they did make public, Mr. Mateen complained about American military activities abroad, warned that he might detonate explosives, and said, “In the next few days, you’re going to see more of this type of action going on.”
As F.B.I. agents and other investigators try to reconstruct the siege, as well as Mr. Mateen’s life in the weeks and months before it, officials are also re-examining the agency’s previous interactions with him.
F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Mateen three times in recent years, but he never faced charges. Although the F.B.I. has defended its handling of the inquiries that involved Mr. Mateen, Ms. Lynch has said that the bureau is looking back at those investigations to determine whether its agents should have taken additional action.
Here in Orlando, much of the focus remains on the Pulse inquiry, and the city is girding for a lengthy investigation.
“This investigation is one week and one day old,” Ronald Hopper, an assistant special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s office in Tampa, Fla., said Monday morning. “And it may last months, and even years.”