A pair of longtime senators penned a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch yesterday accusing her and the rest of the Obama administration of “leading and managing our national and homeland security in ways that are dangerous to America and our citizens.”
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), chairman of the Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee and the Judiciary Committee Immigration Subcommittee, noted in the letter that over the past few weeks Lynch, President Obama and other officials “have taken actions and made statements that suggest to us that the Department and the Administration are focused on efforts that are not up to the challenge that ISIS and the Islamic terrorists pose.”
The day after the San Bernardino terrorist attack last week, Lynch told attendees at the Muslim Advocates dinner, “The fear that you have just mentioned is in fact my greatest fear as a prosecutor, as someone who is sworn to the protection of all of the American people, which is that the rhetoric will be accompanied by acts of violence. My message to not just the Muslim community but to the entire American community is: we cannot give in to the fear that these backlashes are really based on.”
“When we are ruled by fear, we actually are not making ourselves safe,” Lynch added. “My message to the Muslim community is we stand with you in this.”
Shelby and Sessions noted that “while we are wary of parsing phrases of public officials, this statement was widely reported enough to warrant outrage.”
“We strongly disagree with your response to the unthinkable murder of innocent Americans,” they wrote. “Our greatest fear after the heinous acts of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik is that other Islamic terrorists will see an opportunity to enter our country and kill Americans – and that this Administration is doing nothing to stop it.”
“Further, President Obama’s suggested actions after San Bernardino would neither address the tragedy nor keep us safe. We agree with his assessment that the strength of America rests squarely on our free and open society and values as crafted by our Founding Fathers. For the President to then suggest that our response to these murders should be to limit our Second Amendment rights is both ridiculous and irrelevant to the shootings. Neither Mr. Farook nor Ms. Malik’s actions would have been stopped by the policies that the President has suggested. Instead, we believe that President Obama is once again using a tragedy to push liberal gun control policies that would not even address the crime we witnessed – and make Americans less safe by restricting the lawful exercise of their Second Amendment rights.”
The senators demanded that Lynch “put the safety and needs of our country first, and leave the politically correct efforts of interest groups to the advocacy and campaigns of those outside of our government.”
“It is long past time that you and President Obama focus on the real threat facing our great nation: radical Islamic terrorism – not law-abiding Americans,” concluded Sessions and Shelby.
They added that they hope to hear back from Lynch “expeditiously on your efforts to keep our country and communities safe from terrorists.”
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