Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Monday night that his committee will conduct oversight over the Defense Department’s investigation into the Air Force’s failure to report the Texas shooter’s criminal history to the FBI.
“The Air Force has acknowledged that after court-martialing and convicting the perpetrator on charges of domestic assault, it failed to report the conviction to the FBI,” McCain said in a statement. “The Senate Armed Services Committee will conduct rigorous oversight of the Department’s investigation into the circumstances that led to this failure. It’s critical that each of the military services take the steps necessary to ensure that similar mistakes have not occurred and will not occur in the future.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a member of the Armed Services Committee, also told CNN Tuesday morning that the Senate should investigate the Air Force’s failure and suggested that the reporting failure is part of a large problem.
“There are court-martials, thousands of them, every year, that involve very serious felonies as well as domestic violence misdemeanors. All of them should be reported,” Blumenthal said on CNN’s “New Day.” “The preliminary information available to me is they’re not being reported, and that is a major lapse in the system.”
The gunman in Sunday’s deadly shooting, Devin Patrick Kelley, had a history of domestic violence. He was discharged for bad conduct from the Air Force in 2014 over a 2012 assault on his ex-wife. Kelley choked his ex-wife and hit her son hard enough to fracture his skull, and served a year of confinement. The Air Force is required by law to report crimes like assault to the FBI but failed to do so.
