The Justice Department under President Barack Obama forced the FBI to delete the names of more than 500,000 fugitives with outstanding arrest warrants from a background check database, acting FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich testified Wednesday, The Daily Caller reports.
The erasure came as two agencies struggled over the definition of a fugitive — the FBI saying it was anybody with an outstanding arrest warrant and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) saying it was anybody with an outstanding arrest warrant who had also crossed state lines.
During Obama's second term, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel settled the matter by siding with the ATF's interpretation, meaning about half a million fugitives were removed from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
"That was a decision that was made under the previous administration," Bowdich told a Senate Judiciary Committee looking into law enforcement's botched response to last month's massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 children and adults were shot dead.
"It was the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel that reviewed the law and believed that it needed to be interpreted so that if someone was a fugitive in a state, there had to be indications that they had crossed state lines."
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