By NICHOLAS FANDOS
In his address to the nation Sunday night, President Obama will most likely urge Americans to “not give in to fear,” detailmeasures the country is already taking to combat extremism and ask Congress to explore new ones, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said on Sunday.
What you’re going to hear from him is a discussion about what government is doing to ensure all of our highest priority — the protection of the American people,” Ms. Lynch said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The address, scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern time, comes four days after a husband and wife killed 14 people and injured 21 others in San Bernardino, Calif., and amid what Ms. Lynch reiterated was a continuing F.B.I. investigation into the assailants’ possible radicalization and their motivations.
“At this point we do not have any evidence that they were part of a larger group, or a cell, or were planning anything else,” Ms. Lynch told NBC’s Chuck Todd, referencing media reports she said might be misleading.
“I would caution people not to try and define either of these individuals right now,” she added.
The couple — Tafsheen Malik, who was born in Pakistan, and Syed Rizwan Farook, who was born in the United States — had stockpiled weapons, including pipe bombs, in their home before the shooting, which was the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001. Ms. Malik had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, in a Facebook post. On Saturday during a radio broadcast, the groupidentified the couple as “supporters,” a term viewed as further removed than members or operatives.
Ms. Lynch said that social media was playing a relatively small part in the larger terrorism investigation but said she could not discuss specific details of the case.
She urged individuals who notice a suspicious change in the behavior of friends or family to contact law enforcement, but she said the standard for screening individuals should not necessarily be lowered.
Ms. Lynch called the recently passed U.S.A. Freedom Act, which limits some bulk data collection by American intelligence agencies, a “good solution” — but she argued that stricter gun control laws would help address violence in the country.
The attack, which was the focus of nearly all network talk shows on Sunday morning, cast a shadow over a black-tie dinner at the State Department on Saturday night, where a mix of the political and artistic elite gathered to toast this year’s recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry, in an after-dinner speech, called the Islamic State’s recent string of attacks to an assault on “our shared cultural heritage,” singling out the terrorist group’s destruction of carefully preserved art, architecture, historic and holy sites in the Middle East.
“Some might not see the link between the destruction of culture and the attacks on human beings that Daesh has perpetrated in the Middle East, on the streets of Paris, in the skies over Egypt and elsewhere,” Mr. Kerry said. “But make no mistake: these crimes are part of the same war on knowledge, on freedom, on creativity, on modernity, on law, on love, on life and on civilization itself.”
Though Mr. Kerry did not mention the attack in San Bernardino by name, he offered a subtle reference to the importance of immigrants and refugees to American culture and diplomacy.
“So tonight our message to terrorists everywhere is that no matter how many attacks you attempt, we will not be intimidated, we will not be divided, we will not abandon our values, we will not cease to celebrate beauty, we will not stop until we have stopped you,” he said.
Mr. Obama canceled his appearance at Sunday night’s performance at the Kennedy Center. The president, however, will still host the honorees for a reception at the White House on Sunday afternoon.
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