Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says the Islamic State sympathizer gunman who shot dead 49 people at a gay nightclub beat an FBI investigation of his terrorist ties thanks to pressure from "guilty liberals."
"If you're wondering how such an obvious ticking time bomb as Orlando mass murderer Omar Mateen was somehow overlooked by our massive federal security apparatus, it turns out that was deliberate,"
Huckabee wrote on his official website.
Huckabee pointed to FBI Director James Comey's admission that Mateen was the subject of a 10-month probe triggered by boasts to co-workers at a private security firm that he had connections to al-Qaida and had mutual acquaintances with the Boston Marathon bombers.
"So why in the world did they drop the investigation and walk away after 10 months? They bought his claim that he was teasing his co-workers because he thought they were trying to marginalize him for his Muslim faith," Huckabee said.
"In other words, they were more willing to believe that all his American co-workers were bigots than that he might be a danger to society. He'd learned to speak the language of political correctness well and used it to manipulate guilty liberals."
Huckabee said that at the same time the Obama administration was "arguing for the right to gather electronic data on every US citizen, including reporters, it was abandoning real leads."
As well, he said, the administration was "killing a serious terrorist investigative unit and deleting its files, and removing experts and training materials on how to identify threats, all because those things might be seen as culturally insensitive to Muslims. This is how political correctness kills, and it just set a new U.S. record."
Huckabee said he would sum up the Obama Administration's counter-terrorism strategy in 13 words:
"Feds: 'If you see something, say something!' Citizen: 'I see something.' Feds: 'Bigot!"'
Huckabee dropped his bid for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination in February and last month endorsed Donald Trump.
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