Information from the man who bought guns for the San Bernardino shooters that he and one of the gunmen had planned a terror attack in California in 2012 but called it off would be "sufficient for conviction," Sen. James Risch said Wednesday.
"Just with his admissions and the actual steps towards the attack, that would be purchasing the weapon," the Idaho Republican, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told
Jake Tapper on CNN.
Risch was referring to Enrique Marquez, a neighbor of Syed Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29, both of whom were killed in a gun battle with police after the shooting rampage and the Inland Regional Center.
Marquez told authorities Tuesday that he and Farook had planned the earlier attack but "got spooked" because of other terrorism arrests in the area,
Fox News reports.
He bought Farook and Malik two AR-15s that were used in the Dec. 2 attack that killed 14 people and injured 21 others, according to Fox. Marquez checked himself into a mental health center after the siege.
Marquez and Farook were childhood friends.
Authorities had said that Farook legally purchased two other handguns used in the massacre.
"It was far enough along that apparently he's admitted this was a specific plot that they were going to carry it out," Risch told CNN. "They abandoned the plans because of arrests that took place in the area."
He added that the investigation was showing that Malik was radicalized when she came to the U.S. from her native Pakistan on a fiancée visa in 2014 to marry Farook and most likely that the couple was getting information on how to carry out terror attacks from Internet sources.
"The broader concern and the deeper concern at this point is the fact that for those of us that do this all the time, it's really difficult to believe that they weren't getting conversation from someone who's much more experienced in this sort of thing than they were," Risch told Tapper. "And if that's the case, how were they doing it?"