Dallas sniper followed black militant groups on Facebook, was sent home from Afghanistan over harassment claim

Defense official: Dallas suspect served in US Army Reserve

The Army veteran who gunned down five Dallas police officers Thursday evening subscribed to updates from black nationalist groups on social media and had been sent home from Afghanistan following a sexual harassment allegation.
Micah X. Johnson, 25, shot 14 people, including 12 officers, at the end of an anti-police protest in downtown Dallas. He was killed early Friday after authorities sent a bomb-wielding police robot to infiltrate the parking garage where Johnson was holed up.
Beginning in 2009, Johnson served in the Army Reserve as a private first class with a specialty in carpentry and masonry, the military said.
In May 2014, six months into his Afghanistan tour, he was accused of sexual harassment by a female soldier. The Army sent him stateside, recommending an "other than honorable discharge," said Bradford Glendening, the military lawyer who represented him.
That recommendation was "highly unusual," Bradford said, since counseling is usually ordered before more drastic steps are taken.

"In his case, it was apparently so egregious, it was not just the act itself," Glendening told The Associated Press. "I'm sure that this guy was the black sheep of his unit."

According to a court filing Glendening read over the phone Friday, the victim said she wanted Johnson to "receive mental help," while also seeking a protective order to keep him away from her and her family, wherever they went. Johnson was ordered to avoid all contact with her.

Glendening said Johnson was set to be removed from the Army in September 2014 because of the incident, but instead got an honorable discharge months later -- for reasons he can't understand.

"Someone really screwed up," he said. "But to my client's benefit."
After Johnson returned from Afghanistan, a friend who served in his platoon told FoxNews.com, "he got in touch with some bad folks and went all Black Panther."
On Facebook, Johnson "liked" black militant groups including the African American Defense League and the New Black Panther Party, which was founded in Dallas.

His photo showed him wearing a dashiki and raising his fist over the words "Black Power," and his cover shot carried the red, black and green Pan-African flag.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown, said Johnson cited the fatal shootings of black men by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota, which prompted the protest march in Dallas and many other cities.

"The suspect said he was upset with white people and wanted to kill white people, especially white officers," Brown said.

Activists with Black Lives Matter, whose peaceful march police were guarding as he opened fire, repudiated the shootings, and it wasn't immediately clear if Johnson had any connection to the movement, which has disavowed violence.

But one of the groups Johnson "liked" on Facebook, the African American Defense League, posted a message earlier in the week encouraging violence against police in response to the killing in Louisiana.

"The Pig has shot and killed Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana! You and I know what we must do and I don't mean marching, making a lot of noise, or attending conventions. We must `Rally The Troops!' It is time to visit Louisiana and hold a barbeque." The message was attributed to Dr. Mauricelm-Lei Millere, a leader in the organization.

Another group Johnson "liked" was the New Black Panther Party, whose leaders have "long expressed virulently anti-white and anti-Semitic opinions," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Johnson also "liked" the Nation of Islam and the Black Riders Liberation Party, which the center described as "hate groups."

Among Johnson's other social media likes were groups that focus on the history and accomplishments of African-Americans, such as Black Love Matters, the Nubian Rootz Cultural Center, and I Love Black Archaeologist, a web series whose main character uses a time machine to visit famous black people.

The Dallas Police Department said Johnson's Facebook account also included information about Richard Griffin, also known as Professor Griff, who "embraces a radical form of Afrocentrism."

On his Facebook page Friday afternoon, Griffin, a member of Public Enemy -- an influential hip hop group known for its politically charged lyrics -- said he does "not advocate killing Cops."

Johnson had no criminal history, according to authorities. Local court records show his parents were divorced in 1996.

He was believed to have shared a two-story tan brick home in Mesquite with family members. He graduated from John Horn High School in Mesquite, where he was a ROTC member, school district officials said.

Sharon Carter, who works in the district's registrar's office and lives near Johnson's home, said she saw him occasionally wearing military fatigues as he left for Army reservist training, but never saw him armed.

"They say he was standoffish in high school," Carter said. "I never really spoke to him. He kept to himself."

A relative had praised Johnson on his birthday in 2014 as "definitely Army strong" on his Facebook page, calling him an "entertaining, loving, understanding, not to mention handsome friend, brother (and) son."

After Johnson was killed, a relative posted on her Facebook page, "I keep saying its not true...my eyes hurt from crying. Y him??? And why was he downtown." She did not respond to Facebook messages.

Friend Israel Cooper said Johnson went by "Xavier,' his middle name, had a "cool vibe," wasn't really political and seemed educated.

Cooper said he and Johnson played basketball at a park near his home. "He would be out there for eight hours. Like it was his job. Just hoopin'," he said.

Cooper said that when he heard the suspect was Johnson, he "was in disbelief because he's just not like a violent or rough dude."

"So I was, `Nah, it's probably another Xavier somewhere, you know,"' Cooper said. "But then, with pictures on the internet and stuff, I'm like `OK.' "

Cooper added: "It's the quiet ones that just do the most devastating stuff. You never see it coming. But then it's more expected, like `I should have known."'

Obama renews gun control push after 'senseless' Dallas murders

The only answer to the problem this man can come up with over and over and over is gun control.

President Obama renewed his push for gun control measures Friday as he condemned the “senseless murders” of five Dallas police officers in a coordinated sniper attack overnight.
Late Friday, the White House announced Obama would cut short his current European trip by a day and visit Dallas early next week.
The attack, which also injured at least seven, was carried out during an anti-police brutality protest. It was the nation's deadliest day for law enforcement since 9/11.
Obama, speaking at the start of a NATO summit in Poland, decried the “vicious, calculated and despicable attack.”
He vowed “justice will be done” and voiced support for the “extraordinarily difficult job” of America’s law enforcement officers.
“Today is a wrenching reminder of the sacrifices that they make for us,” Obama said.
But before wrapping his remarks, the president once again returned to the issue of gun laws.
“We also know that when people are armed with powerful weapons, unfortunately it makes attacks like these more deadly and more tragic, and in the days ahead we’re going to have to consider those realities as well,” Obama said.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said it appears multiple rifle-toting suspects were working together, "triangulating at different positions" as protesters marched through the streets of Dallas. Three people were in custody and one suspect dead.
The attack comes on the heels of a string of failed votes in Congress to tighten gun regulations, particularly for those on terror-related watch lists. The latest surge of votes followed the deadly terror massacre at an Orlando nightclub last month.
Lawmakers, though, still have not been able to come together on a piece of compromise legislation. Democrats have objected strongly to the stalemate, even staging a protracted House floor sit-in.
House Democrats are likely to ramp up their calls for gun restrictions following the Dallas murders as well. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, at a previously scheduled press conference Friday morning, continued to urge legislation on the issue.
"We need legislative action now," CBC Chairman G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., said, while mourning the victims of both the Dallas tragedy and two recent deadly shootings by police.
Protesters also held a police shooting rally by the U.S. Capitol Thursday night. At the same time, Fox News is told House Democrats are mindful of further stoking the embers of an already volatile situation.
Obama’s swift turn to gun control riled some Republicans.
Former 2016 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said the “common denominator” is “not the weapon” – but the “anarchy in the heart of the person who’s … committing the crime.”
Meanwhile, lawmakers across the country voiced solidarity with the people of Dallas and law enforcement community.
“Tonight I join the people of Dallas, Texas, in praying for the safety of the Dallas Police Officers and all who are in the downtown are this evening,” Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions said in a statement. "Our police officers selflessly put their lives on the line every single day to vigilantly protect our families and communities and it is devastating to think that someone deliberately targeted our law enforcement.”

Suspected sniper dies from self-inflicted wound after standoff with Dallas police; five officers killed in attacks

DEVELOPING: A suspected sniper who was in a standoff with Dallas Police early Friday reportedly died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound hours after five officers were killed and several others were wounded in an attack targeting law enforcement officers during a protest march.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said the suspect that was holed up in a downtown parking garage had exchanged gunfire with officers for 45 minutes and claimed "the end is coming", as well as saying that he had planted bombs across Dallas and wanted to hurt more officers.
KDFW-TV reported the suspect shot himself at around 2:15 a.m. local time.
Brown also said authorities had earlier taken a woman into custody near the garage. Two men were also being questioned after police pursued their vehicle away from downtown onto Interstate 35.
Brown said "our assumption" is that the four suspects were "working together with rifles, triangulating at different positions." He had no information on a possible motive or the identities of any of the suspects. He also noted that police were not completely certain that every suspect was in custody.
Late Thursday, Brown confirmed the four fatalities — three Dallas PD officers and one transit officer — and said seven other officers and one civilian were wounded in the shooting. Three of the injured officers reportedly were in critical condition and two others were in surgery. The Dallas Police Association confirmed a fifth officer had died in a Tweet early Friday.
DART identified its fallen officer as Brent Thompson, 43. He is the first DART officer to be killed in the line of duty.
Brown said multiple shooters positioned themselves in two parking garages in downtown Dallas and "planned to injure and kill as many law enforcement officers as they could."
A Dallas police source estimated to Fox News that at least 60 rounds were fired over a "large kill zone." The source added that the shooting would have required considerable planning.
"It's a heartbreaking moment for the city of Dallas," Mayor Mike Rawlings said. "I ask everybody focus on one thing right now, and that is Dallas police officers, their families, those that are deceased [and] those that are in the hospital fighting for their lives."
Fox4 cameras captured protesters running away from the scene of the shooting shortly before 9 p.m. local time. A cameraman approached the scene and captured officers apparently lying on the ground.
Aerial images showed officers appearing to focus their search on a nearby parking garage, which may have served as the snipers’ perch.
Witness Carlos Harris told the Dallas Morning News the gunfire was "strategic. It was tap-tap-pause. Tap-tap-pause."
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released a statement saying he has directed the Texas Department of Public Safety director to offer "whatever assistance the City of Dallas needs at this time."
"In times like this we must remember -- and emphasize -- the importance of uniting as Americans," Abbott said.
The protesters had gathered after a Minnesota officer on Wednesday fatally shot Philando Castile while he was in a car with a woman and a child in a St. Paul suburb. The aftermath of the shooting was purportedly livestreamed in a widely shared Facebook video.
A day earlier, Alton Sterling was shot in Louisiana after being pinned to the pavement by two white officers. That, too, was captured on a cellphone video.
Michael Bautista told KDFW the protest march had been "very peaceful" before the shooting started.
Brittany Peete, a demonstrator, told the Associated Press she didn't hear the gunshots, but she "saw people rushing back toward me saying there was an active shooter."
Peete said she saw a woman trip and nearly get trampled as people ran to get to safety.
"Everyone just started running," Devante Odom, 21, told The Dallas Morning News. "We lost touch with two of our friends just trying to get out of there."

When it comes to Hillary Clinton, American justice is blind, deaf and dumb

FBI Director James Comey was summoned to Capitol Hill on Thursday to explain why orange will not be Hillary Clinton's new black.
House Republicans grilled the FBI director for hours over his recommendation not to press charges against Bill Clinton's wife.
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The FBI determined she was extremely careless, but not criminal in her handling of confidential and classified emails. They said it was not her intent to break the law and put the entire nation in grave danger.
Be sure to use that defense the next time you get pulled over in Hog Jaw, Arkansas for running that red light. Let me know how that turns out for you.
We the People are held to a much different standard than high-falootin’ folks like Hillary Clinton. And this sordid email affair illustrates that Lady Justice is not only blind, but she's also deaf and dumb.
There was a lot of political showmanship on Capitol Hill and to be honest I doubt much will come of Thursday's proceedings. However, there were several moments of enlightenment.
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For example, Director Comey admitted that some of Mrs. Clinton's public comments about her emails were not true. In other words, she lied. She flat-out told some whoppers.
On the claim she never emailed classified material?
"That's not true," Comey replied. "There was classified material emailed."
How about that claim that she only used one device?
"She used multiple devices," Comey told lawmakers.
And it turns out she lied about turning over all work-related emails.
"We found work-related emails, thousands that were not returned," he said.
Bless her heart, but that woman wouldn't know the truth if it was a pant suit on the 50 percent-off rack at TJ Maxx.
“It’s apparent that she lied to the American people,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., later said of Clinton.
But the jaw-dropping revelation of the hearing involved Mrs. Clinton's sophistication level (and they weren't talking about her impressive collection of pant suits).
The FBI director said she may not have been “sophisticated enough” to understand the classified markings on her emails.
"I think it's possible, possible that she didn't understand what a (c) meant when she saw it in the body of an email like that," Comey told bewildered Republican lawmakers.
What did she think the (c) meant? Cheetos? Cauliflower? Or perhaps she thought the State Department monogramed all of her documents?
I mean - you would have to be as dumb as a door knob to not know something like that, right?
Is that what the FBI director was trying to tell us -- that the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party has the intelligence level of yard mulch.
Sweet mercy, America!

FBI chief’s testimony about Clinton emails torpedoes the bureau’s reputation

There is the bipartisan pretense that the FBI is the only government agency in Washington that is above reproach. Yet, this is the agency that collaborated with Lois Lerner and the IRS in an effort to criminally prosecute opponents of Barack Obama. Then, unsurprisingly, this same FBI (and Justice Department) found nothing worth prosecuting in their own blatant malfeasance.
Again, this is the same FBI whose Keystone Cops approach to counter-terrorism failed to prevent eminently preventable terrorist acts ranging from the Boston Marathon bombing to the Orlando massacre. In fact, we now know that an FBI supervisor actually told one Florida police department investigating Omar Mateen, “We do NOT believe he is a terrorist” [Emphasis in original]
How does an agency with this sort of record escape accountability? Quite simply, by doing favors for the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It is to politicians like Clinton and Obama that men such as Comey owe their jobs – and agencies such as the FBI owe their budgets. And so, they are subservient.
According to Comey’s testimony before the House Thursday, the Hillary Clinton lies, subterfuge, document destruction and national security violations that would, for starters, get you or any other non-political elitist drummed out of the FBI, shouldn’t even be considered for prosecution by a “reasonable prosecutor.” Well, not if that “reasonable prosecutor” owes his meal ticket and position of power to the likes (and dislikes) of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

What was perhaps most striking about Comey’s testimony on Thursday is how he carefully narrowed his investigation in a way that conveniently helps Hillary Clinton.

What was perhaps most striking about Comey’s testimony on Thursday is how he carefully narrowed his investigation in a way that conveniently helps Hillary Clinton.
Did Hillary Clinton lie to Congress about her email practices? Not part of the investigation. Did she conceal and illegally remove federal records? Not part of the investigation. And no word on the pay-for-play schemes with the Clinton Foundation and its donors. How did the classified material get on Clinton’s system? Comey confessed his FBI didn’t even investigate this basic question.
One analysis of Comey’s legal sophistry is that he saw that the fix was in and he wasn’t going to cause a crisis and put his job on the line by recommending a prosecution to a compromised and conflicted Obama Justice Department.
Comey may think he’s successfully threaded the political needle – highlighting Clinton’s malfeasance while giving her a get-out-of-jail-free card. But all he’s done is further lowered the reputation of the FBI in the eyes of the American people.

State Department reopens internal probe of Clinton emails

The State Department is re-opening an internal investigation into whether Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her top aides mishandled classified information, Fox News confirmed late Thursday.
The investigation, which was first reported by the Associated Press, focuses on how classified emails to and from Clinton's private server were categorized at the time they were sent.
The State Department started its review in January after declaring 22 emails from Clinton's private server to be "top secret." The investigation was halted after the FBI began investigating Clinton's so-called "homebrew" email setup last April. On Wednesday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said there would be no indictments resulting from the FBI probe.
"Given the Department of Justice has now made its announcement, the State Department intends to conduct its internal review," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. "Our goal will be to be as transparent as possible about our results, while complying with our various legal obligations."
Kirby set no deadline for the investigation's completion.
Clinton was secretary of state until early 2013. Most of her top advisers left shortly thereafter.
Kirby said earlier this week that former officials can still face "administrative sanctions." The most serious of those penalties is loss of security clearances, which could complicate Clinton's naming of a national security team if she becomes president.
Beyond the Democratic front-runner, the probe is most likely examining confidants Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and Huma Abedin, who wrote many of the emails to their boss that the various investigations have focused on. Mills, Clinton's chief of staff at the State Department, has been viewed as a possibility for the same job in the White House. There is speculation that Sullivan, Clinton's former policy chief, could be national security adviser.

The State Department says it won't identify former officials that still hold security clearances. But in an email Fox News made public in February, the department described Mills as still holding a valid clearance.

Sanctuary City Cartoons

Senate Dems block votes on immigration issues, including sanctuary cities

The Republican-controlled Senate failed Wednesday to advance efforts to change federal immigration law -- including one to cut funding to so-called sanctuary cities.
The vote was 53-44, failing to get the minimum 60 votes to begin debate on the issue.
The measure attempted to block congressional funding for sanctuary cities -- municipalities that ban police from cooperating with immigration officials to potentially deport illegal immigrants.
Senate Republicans also failed to get enough votes to advance their proposed Kate’s Law – named after Kate Steinle, who was fatally shot in July 2015, allegedly by an illegal immigrant who had multiple felony convictions and was deported several times prior to the incident.
“How many times does this have to happen?” Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey asked just before the 55-42 vote that failed along party lines. “At some point, a person needs to go to jail. That’s what Kate’s Law does.”
However, Democrats strongly opposed the measures.

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Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said they put presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s “ant-immigration rhetoric into action.”
“These bills follow Trump’s lead in demonizing, criminalizing immigrant, Latino families,” the Nevada Democrat said before the votes.
In addition, the White House issued a statement after the vote on Kate’s Law, in part saying: “The bill fails to offer the comprehensive reforms needed to fix the Nation's broken immigration laws and would impose severe and unprecedented mandatory minimum sentences that would undermine the discretion of federal judges to make sure the punishment fits the crime in each case.”
Steinle was walking with her father on a San Francisco pier when Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez allegedly fatally shot her. Steinle was 32.
Months earlier, Sanchez was in the custody of San Francisco police and slated to be picked up by federal agents. However, the police declined to cooperate and instead released him.
“An entire year later, the problem that prompted Kate’s tragic, untimely death still exists,” Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, who was sponsoring the Kate's Law bill, said on July 1, the one-year anniversary of Steinle’s killing.
“Sanctuary cities and the criminal aliens they harbor are a threat to the safety of the American people,” Cruz continued. “Yet, San Francisco and jurisdictions around the country still shelter illegal aliens, actively thwarting enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws.”