U.S. officials say the suspect accused of shooting two National Guard members near the White House on Wednesday was "radicalized" in the U.S. after leaving Afghanistan.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, in an interview on Fox News's "Fox News Sunday," was asked about reports that the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was vetted by the CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center before he entered the US in 2021 as part of the Biden-era program to help resettle Afghans who assisted the U.S. during its two-decade war in Afghanistan.
"We know that this shooter who shot our National Guardsmen in D.C. the day before Thanksgiving, he was radicalized. You're going to hear a lot more about that, and these people should not have been in our country," Bondi said in the interview.
She later added: "The fact that he was radicalized in this country, we are letting Secretary [Kristi] Noem handle that from Homeland Security. She is working on that."
Noem, in a Sunday interview on NBC News's "Meet the Press," confirmed that the current thinking from national security officials is that the suspect was radicalized after arriving in the U.S., but she pushed back on the suggestion that he would have gone through a rigorous vetting process.
"We believe he was radicalized since he's been here in this country. We do believe it was through connections in his home community and state, and we're going to continue to talk to those who interacted with him, who were his family members, who talk to them," she said.
The suspect was a member of the CIA trained strike force in Afghanistan, a position that would have required extensive vetting.
But Noem said the Biden administration, during the rushed Afghanistan withdrawal, "put people on airplanes, brought them to the United States without vetting them," adding, "They brought them into our country and then said they would vet them afterwards."
She noted that the change in government control would have made it difficult to conduct proper background checks at the time.
"And then at that time, to do a good job of vetting people, you need to have cooperation of that government that is from their country. You have to have a stable government that will give you information, contacts, background information, and biometrics that you may need to identify that individual, their dates of service," she said.
Noem pushed back on questions from Welker about why the Trump administration granted the suspect asylum in April if he had not gone through proper vetting.
"Vetting is happening when they come into the country, and that was completely abandoned under Joe Biden's administration. That's the irresponsibility that has completely devastated our country, Kristen. Put us in such a dangerous position," she said.