Here's a new item for the sarcasm-laden "Our country is in the very best of hands" stack of embarrassments Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds has been accumulating during the past several years. The headline at media aggregator Grabien.com is: "AG LYNCH ADMITS THE FBI HAS LOST TRACK OF OMAR MATEEN’S WIFE."
If this admission had occurred during any non-leftist presidential administration, the establishment press would jump at the chance to publish and broadcast embarrassing law enforcement news such as this far and wide. But in this case, a review of stories at the Associated Press's main national site, its Big Story site, and at the New York Times found no indication that the nation's two primary establishment news gatekeepers have noted Attorney General Lynch's admission concerning Noor Salman, the wife of Orlando massacre terrorist Omar Mateen.
According to a June 15 AP report, "In Fort Pierce, Florida, where Salman and Mateen lived, Salman made a brief visit to their first-floor apartment late Monday, escorted by police and her brother-in-law."
Her whereabouts at some point since then have apparently become a mystery. Here's the video containing Lynch's wordy answer to a reporter's simple "yes or no" question:
Transcript:
REPORTER: Has the shooter's wife left the State of Florida?
ATTORNEY GENERAL LORETTA LYNCH: Um, right now, I do not know exactly the answer to that. I believe she was going to travel, but I do not exactly know her location now.
Lynch took over two dozen words to say, "I don't know."
I suppose there's a tiny amount of wiggle room here, in the sense that Lynch herself may not know where Noor Salman is, but that others in law enforcement actually do. But that seems highly unlikely. Given Lynch's embarrassing position, one would think that someone else would come forward and say, "Oh yeah, we know where she is." But as far as I can tell, no one has.
More to the point, given her status, based on several press reports, including some found at the AP and the New York Times, as someone who was in a position to know that Omar Mateen was plotting an attack, and as someone who might even have been an accomplice during his preparations, why was Noor Salman allowed to leave the Orlando area at all? CBS News reported on June 15 that Salman "bought ammunition with her husband" and that "Investigators believe Salman drove with Mateen to case the club prior to the attack."
Only center-right blogs and outlets like BizPacReview.com, Gateway Pundit and others seem to care about these and other quite pertinent questions. It would appear that the establishment press is too busy obsessing over gun control to pay attention to anything else.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
