FBI Was Warned About Nikolas Cruz One Month Ago and Did Nothing

In a startling announcement, the FBI said in a news release moments ago that someone "close to Nikolas Cruz" called the bureau this past January 5 — slightly more than 30 days before this week's massacre — and warned the federal government that Cruz owned guns and had expressed a desire to commit a school shooting.

In a remarkable moment of candor, FBI Director Christopher Wray said today that the agency failed to investigate the claim or alert the Miami field office.

"Under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life," Wray said. "The information should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami field office, where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken."

Instead, Wray said, "these protocols were not followed" and no one bothered to check up on Cruz. He killed 17 people a month later.

FBI says it received a specific, credible tip about Nikolas Cruz in January — including the possibility that he could conduct a school shooting — and mishandled it. pic.twitter.com/GIjhzJII0m

— Ali Watkins (@AliWatkins) February 16, 2018

This was not the first time local or federal law enforcement was warned about Cruz: A YouTube user emailed the FBI last September to say a user with Cruz's name was threatening violence online.

And between 2010 and 2016, the Broward County Sheriff's Office was dispatched to Cruz's home 36 times after neighbors reported that Nikolas Cruz and his brother Zachary had been acting erratically. Cruz, who reportedly has mental illness, was never arrested.

(The leader of a white-supremacist militia has also claimed Cruz trained with his group in Tallahassee and used what he learned to kill Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students, but authorities have not found hard evidence to back up that claim, and the leader of the group has since tried to walk back his statements.)

The admission comes at a politically precarious time for Wray. President Donald Trump has been criticizing the FBI for months in an attempt to discredit the bureau's Trump-Russia investigation. Donald Trump Jr. this week infamously "liked" a tweet claiming the FBI was "too busy trying to undermine the president to bother with doing its freaking job."

Critics on the right have already spent much of the week blaming law enforcement for failing to prevent the Parkland shooting, claiming the FBI is more to blame than the nation's lax gun laws. Florida Governor Rick Scott has already called on Wray to resign today. Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a thoughtless human flatworm who has received millions in funding from the National Rifle Association, has since attacked the FBI for its failures today:

.@marcorubio slams FBI: pic.twitter.com/3Ig1RKakhn

— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) February 16, 2018

The FBI's critics on the left have instead argued the bureau spends far too much time surveilling innocent Muslims and conducting drug raids and not enough time investigating credible threats from white supremacists.

Regardless, Cruz was legally allowed to purchase an AR-15-style assault rifle once he turned 18. And he has since confessed to using that gun to kill 14 teenagers and three adults this past Wednesday.

This is a breaking story. This post will be updated.