Shooting shows challenges for FBI in probing domestic terror

WASHINGTON — Following two mass shootings over the weekend, President Donald Trump called on federal authorities Monday to do a better job identifying violent extremists in the U.S. “I can go online and say whatever I want, but that doesn’t mean it’s sufficient for the FBI to open an investigation,” said David Gomez, a former FBI counterterrorism supervisor. “The laws are designed to respond to crimes already committed and then investigate them.” Confronting domestic terrorism is an urgent issue for law enforcement at a time when white supremacists and like-minded extremists are causing more murders, including a rampage at a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 last October, than Americans inspired by foreign groups. Still, Trump said Monday, law enforcement “must do a better job of identifying and acting on early warning signs.” “I am directing the Department of Justice to work in partnership with local, state and federal agencies, as well as social media companies, to develop tools that can detect mass shooters before they strike,” the president said. “Our domestic threat actors, particularly independent actors, are very, very hard to surveil the same way we would surveil a foreign terrorist organization because we’re constitutionally precluded from piercing” protected free speech, said Adam Lee, a former high-ranking FBI official who oversaw hate crimes investigations at the bureau and led the Richmond, Virginia, field office at the time of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017.