“They had bombs on the floor,” Trump said. “Many people saw this, many, many people. Muslims living with them, in the same area, they saw that house. They saw that.”
Darren Hauck / Getty Images
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said Tuesday that Muslims knew a radicalized couple planned to launch the December terrorist attack on a county workers' holiday party in San Bernardino, California, but refused to notify authorities.
Trump has repeated the claim to thousands of supporters at campaign rallies and, most recently, on live television during a presidential town hall interview on CNN.
"In San Bernardino people knew what was going on," Trump told Anderson Cooper on Tuesday. "They had bombs on the floor. Many people saw this, many, many people. Muslims living with them, in the same area, they saw that house. They saw that."
There is, however, no evidence to suggest this claim is true.
Reports that neighbors saw suspicious activity at the Redlands home of Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the radicalized couple behind the attack, but did nothing to stop it has been repeated in conservative media since the December assault, often arguing that political correctness and fear of racial profiling allowed the attack to happen.
Those news reports all appear to stem from local media interviews with an unnamed man who said he was working in the neighborhood, and another man who was visiting the area and relaying, second-hand, a story from a neighbor. Neither mentioned "bombs" or any objects "on the floor."
FBI agents investigate the Redlands, California, town home belonging to the attackers.
Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images
On Tuesday, Trump claimed a person "saw bombs all over the apartment," but didn't report the couple to police because they didn't "want to be accused of racial profiling."
His comments came in response to a question from an audience-member about what he would do as president to protect the rights of minorities. Trump's answer, however, was more of an explanation as to why he would support "monitoring" Muslim communities and mosques,
The candidate also appeared to go further than he previously had with the claim, suggesting it was not just neighbors who feared being accused of racial profiling, but other Muslims who decided to keep quiet about the pending attack.
"He saw bombs all over the apartment, OK?" Trump told Cooper. "It's just an excuse. it's an illegal excuse."
The Trump campaign did not respond to questions from BuzzFeed News about his claims and it is unclear where his assertion originated.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1M1WJM8
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