FBI continues probe of lake in California shootings

Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, told reporters afterward that neighbors of the San Bernardino shooters saw “suspicious things occurring around where these two killers were living” but didn’t tell law enforcement.

(FBI, left, and California Department of Motor Vehicles via AP, File). Marquez provided the rifles used by Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, in the assault last week.

FBI Director James Comey told a Senate hearing Wednesday the agency has found online discussions about jihad between Farook and Malik from late 2013, before they began dating.

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong).

California Democrats are aggressively calling for gun control measures in the wake of the shootings, and they demanded Thursday that a lifting of the ban on research into gun violence be included in a spending bill needed to keep the government from shutting down after Friday.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that among the unanswered questions were why Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik made a decision to attack Farook’s workplace rather than a more symbolic target.

Authorities say Farook and Malik, who came to the US on a fiancee visa in July 2014 and married her husband the next month, were not known to law enforcement before the shootings.

An FBI dive team continued to search a San Bernardino lake looking for “a hard drive or anything the shooters threw in”, another front in the investigation of the terror attack that killed 14 and injured 22. Authorities believe the marriage was faked in an attempt to help the woman stay in the U.S. Marquez told FBI investigators that he and Farook plotted a terror attack in 2012, but shelved the plans after four people were arrested and charged in a plot to commit jihad against U.S. military bases overseas, according to ABC News.

Meanwhile, most San Bernardino County offices re-opened for business December 7 for the first time since the shooting. The couple died in a shootout with law enforcement hours after the attack, leaving behind a 6-month-old daughter.

Family members have said they had not seen any evidence the U.S.-born Farook, nor his Pakistani wife, had been “radicalized”.

“We don’t have any idea about what happened over there”, Malik said in a phone interview Friday.

“I don’t think we know yet enough to say these were apparent without the advantage of hindsight”, Schiff said.

The FBI initially investigated five men as part of the Riverside group. The division’s employees will remain on leave, as they have been since the attacks. “We’re also working very hard to understand whether there was anybody else invlolved with assisting them, with supporting them, with equipping them”, he added.

Asked repeatedly whether any hints could have led law enforcement to prevent the attack, Sen. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.

John D’Angelo, assistant special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Los Angeles, confirmed that Marquez purchased the two assault rifles that were used in the attack.

“Watch, ‘” Nick Rodriguez, who knew Marquez for the past couple of years, told The New York Times.

Marquez hasn’t been charged with a crime and has been cooperating with authorities.