So, while the national student walkout is partisan and in cadence with the democrats, with yet another march is scheduled later this month….there is a bombshell revealed from testimony in a congressional hearing.
On Wednesday, acting FBI deputy director David Bowdich testified during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that former President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice forced the FBI to delete over 500,000 fugitives, who had outstanding arrest warrants, from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
“It’s my understanding that under federal law fugitives cannot legally purchase or possess guns,” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) began. “We’ve heard from local law enforcement that the Justice Department has issued a memo that forced the FBI NICS background check database to drop more than 500,000 names of fugitives with outstanding arrest warrants because it was uncertain whether those fugitives had fled across state lines.”
“Mr. Bowdich, can you describe why this determination was made by the Justice Department?” Feinstein asked.
“That was a decision that was made under the previous administration,” Bowdich replied. “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.”
Advance the video of the hearing to the 58:51 mark.
According to The Washington Post, the FBI considered any person with an outstanding arrest warrant to be a fugitive. On the other hand, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives defined a fugitive as someone who has an outstanding arrest warrant and has crossed state lines.
That disagreement was settled at the end of Obama’s second term, when the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel sided with the ATF’s interpretation. Under President Donald Trump, the DOJ defined a fugitive as a person who went to another state to dodge criminal prosecution or evade giving testimony in criminal court, and implemented the Office of Legal Counsel’s decision. The decision meant that around half a million fugitives were removed from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. More here.
