The nation was left with more questions than answers on Thursday as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro and FBI Director Kash Patel deflected pointed inquiries about President Donald Trump’s potential connection to the deadly shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C.
At a tense press conference, a reporter pressed Pirro on whether the National Guard’s deployment could be traced back to Trump’s executive order, following the attack by an Afghan national. The reporter asked, “I want to ask, if you could please comment on, obviously, under the Biden administration, the words are it was a ‘failed withdrawal’ [from Afghanistan]. There are people who are also upset with the president, believing that the National Guard members should not even have been there if it were not for the executive order.”
Pirro, visibly agitated, refused to entertain the premise of the question. “I don’t even want to talk about whether they should have been there!” she exclaimed. “We ought to kiss the ground and thank God that the president said it’s time to bring in more law enforcement to make sure that a city that had the fourth highest homicide rate in the country was that that violence was quelled!”
When the reporter pressed further, Pirro shut it down entirely: “I’m not even going to go there,” she fumed, signaling how fraught discussions over accountability have become in the wake of the tragedy.
Patel spoke immediately after Pirro, dodging questions about whether the suspected shooter, identified by Pirro as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, had been granted asylum by the Trump administration. The suspect, an Afghan national who had been living in Bellingham, Washington, was blamed by Pirro and other Trump administration figures on policies under former President Joe Biden.
A reporter directly asked Patel: “Was the suspect granted asylum, and if so, when did that happen – under which administration? And did authorities miss any signs, either the asylum process or even back when he reportedly worked for the CIA, If you could talk about that?”
Patel avoided giving a clear answer, instead pointing fingers at the Biden administration. “Well, you miss all the signs when you do absolutely zero vetting,” he said. “And that’s exactly what happened in this case, when you in the prior administration made the decision to allow thousands of people into this country without doing a single piece of background checking or vetting, that’s how you miss every single sign, and [Homeland Security] Secretary Kristi Noem has put out details specifically related to your other questions, so I’ll let that speak for themselves.”
Even after being pressed again on the timeline of Lakanwal’s asylum, Patel continued to deflect. “Yes, I believe Kristi Noem put that out,” he said. “And that’s a DHS matter, and I’ll refer it to them.”
Thursday’s exchanges left reporters—and the public—with little clarity, but a clear signal: when it comes to accountability in the wake of the D.C. shooting, some of the nation’s top officials are unwilling to discuss the role of the president, instead turning the spotlight onto the previous administration.
Watch the clip below:
