There’s no evidence the group directed the woman, Tashfeen Malik, and her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, to launch the attacks, which killed 14 and wounded 21, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.
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Separately, a law enforcement official said investigators are looking into whether Malik was radicalized in the Middle East, where she spent considerable time, and used her 2014 marriage to Farook to penetrate the USA and commit jihad.
Suspects Farook and Malik were killed by police in a shootout after their deadly attack.
A Facebook executive confirmed Friday that Malik had praised Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a post on the social media site just minutes into the attack. Bowdich said neither Farook nor Malik had been under investigation by the FBI or other law enforcement agency prior to Wednesday. They said none of his relatives had any indication either Farook or his wife held extremist views.
The New York Times, in its first front-page editorial since 1920, said it was “a moral outrage and a national disgrace” that the sort of firearms used in the attack were readily available.
“We hope that will take us to their motivation”, Bowdich said.
She spoke broken English and her primary language was Urdu, Farook family attorney David Chesley said, adding: “She was very conservative”.
The three officers arrived at Marquez’ Riverside, California, home at 1:30 p.m. and were let in by a man inside the home.
In a news conference, the brother-in-law of Syed Farook said that he was “shocked” and that he had no idea Farook would carry out such an attack.
Acquaintances from local mosques said that Farook was devout, quiet and intensely private about his personal life.
Saira Khan, Farook’s sister and Tashfeen Malik’s sister-in-law, told ABC News she and her husband, Farhan Khan, could give the orphaned baby “a stable upbringing”.
As investigators search for signs of a political or religious motivation for the massacre, the discovery of Ms. Malik’s Facebook posting has forced them to consider whether any radical impetus for it came from her more than from the husband, or from both.
Batool said she had never met Malik, who mostly grew up in Saudi Arabia with her family.
The couple’s orphaned daughter is in the care of child protective services and the family will try to recover her next week.
Farook was born in Chicago to Pakistani parents and raised in California.
An English-language version of the Islamic State’s broadcast called the attackers “soldiers” for the group, rather than “followers” as in the original Arabic version.
Most recruits had tried to join IS on its home turf, including three teenage girls from Colorado who were intercepted in Germany last year and a 19-year-old MS woman who the Federal Bureau of Investigation says set off with her love interest before being stopped at a regional airport.
The FBI has said the man is not a suspect in shootings, though they want to question him.
Since March 2014, 71 people have been charged in the U.S.in connection with supporting ISIS, including 56 this year, according to a recent report from the George Washington University Program on Extremism.
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Elsewhere, FBI agents raided a house in California that neighbours said belonged to a childhood friend of Farook.
