Which side were they on?
This Fox News story is willfully misleading: “extreme vetting” is a term Trump has used to describe the procedures he hopes to implement. There was nothing “extreme” about Obama’s vetting process, and all this happened during the Obama administration. So why is Fox trying to use it to discredit Trump?
“Iraqi insurgent fighter allegedly lied about identity, got through ‘extreme’ vetting,” by William Lajeunesse and Malia Zimmerman, Fox News, March 8, 2017:
Federal lawmakers are investigating how a former Iraqi insurgent fighter was able to lie about his identity and still get through America’s ‘extreme’ vetting process.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to find out why the terror suspect’s pending arrest was allegedly spiked just over a week before the election. Trump had run on a tough-on-terror platform and had been critical of President Obama’s refugee policy.
“When [Joint Terrorism Task Force] and the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Western District of Texas sought to prosecute this refugee, the local law enforcement and prosecutors allegedly ‘met resistance’ from officials within the National Security Division’s Counter Terrorism section in Washington DC,” Committee chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said in a March 6 letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“The ‘resistance’ allegedly occurred a few weeks before the 2016 election, and local authorities believed the lack of progress in this case was handled inadequately,” Johnson wrote.
The suspect is an Iraqi man who had entered the U.S. under a false name. His real name was not released.
Fox News has learned the JTTF confirmed through U.S. Special Forces who encountered the suspect during operations that he claimed to have participated in attacks against American troops as an insurgent.
At some point, the Iraqi entered the U.S. through the refugee program. His activities in the U.S. triggered an investigation by JTTF members, who planned to charge him with visa fraud while they investigated possible further charges.
Sources say the case demonstrates the challenge of vetting people with little documented history in countries where there’s no paper trail.
Officials from the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. attorney’s office in Western Texas and the Joint Terrorism Task Force refused comment….