Attorney General Loretta Lynch updated reporters on US efforts to assist French investigations. “We will not allow merchants of violence to rob us of our most precious ideals”, Ms. Lynch said in a briefing Thursday at the Department of Justice. Our values are not secondary considerations in the fight against terror, they are essential to the work that we do and they are essential to the nation that we protect.
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“We are not aware of any credible threat here of a Paris-type attack and we have seen no connection at all between the Paris attackers and the United States”, said Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey.
“The threat posed to us by the group called ISIL, the so-called Islamic State, which, in the United States we talk about what they’ve been doing here, the recruiting through social media, if they find a live one, they move them to Twitter direct messaging”.
“We take all threats seriously, we are acting aggressively to diffuse all threats as they emerge, and we are vigorously investigating and prosecuting those who seek to harm the american people. They want you to imagine them in the shadows, they want you to imagine them as something greater than they are”, he said. Additionally, he said there is “no connection at all” between the Paris attackers and the U.S.
But, she said, the DOJ’s “highest priority is-and will remain-the security of our homeland and the safety of all Americans”, and that DOJ is “operating around the clock-as we have since 9/11 and even before-to uncover and disrupt any plot that takes aim at our people, our infrastructure, and our way of life”. “What concerns me about the tone is it very much runs the risk of essentially devolving the problem on one group of people and saying, ‘If we just fix this one thing, we’re done and we’re safe'”.
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That’s not the case, she said, pointing out that half of the recent ISIS-related cases involved USA citizens. “We will keep watching them and if we see something we will do something about it”.
