The Department of Justice is scrubbing transcripts of the calls Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen made to police during his massacre of references to his radical Muslim beliefs, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Sunday.
(FOX)- A partial transcript of the conversations between Mateen, who killed 49 and wounded scores in the June 12 attack at a Florida gay nightclub June 12 is set to be released on Monday. But Lynch, who appeared on numerous Sunday talk shows, said the transcripts will not include Mateen’s vow to follow ISIS or any other religious justification for the attack.
“What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups, and further his propaganda,” Lynch told NBC. “We are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance [to the Islamic State].”
Critics blasted the move by the administration, which has rejected branding terrorist acts as motivated by radical Islam and has sought to paint the Orlando attack as a gun control issue.
“This is not just a simple wording issue,” Ric Grenell, a Fox News contributor and former aide to UN Ambassador John Bolton told Fox and Friends Monday morning. “The fact that Loretta Lynch is somehow redacting the specific enemy that is being called out here is a PR move.”
Mateen died in a hail of gunfire after police stormed the venue, but not before pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State terror group, even during his shooting rampage inside the gay nightclub.
Lynch said a top goal, while intensifying pressure on ISIS, is to build a complete profile of him in order to help prevent another massacre like Orlando.