Investigators are risking brain aneurysms trying to divine a motive for a 24-year-old Muslim immigrant named Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, an immigrant who has made several unexplained visits to the Middle East recently and whose father managed to end up on the terror watch list, shot up an armed forces recruiting station and killed four US Marines. Leading the investigation is the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, a guy named Bill Killian.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said the F.B.I. was leading “a national security investigation,” and the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, William C. Killian, said federal officials were “treating this as an act of domestic terrorism.” But he, like other federal officials, cautioned that the investigation would ultimately determine how the shooting would be classified. Law enforcement officers swarmed the sites throughout the day and said that they knew of no public safety concerns.

We wrote about Killian a couple of years ago. Back then Killian was advocating prosecuting people for hate crimes for ‘anti-Muslim’ speech. No mention of advocacy of violent (assuming there is any other kind) jihad, but he was really, really concerned that people were being all meany pants to Muslims. Via POLITICO:

“We need to educate people about Muslims and their civil rights, and as long as we’re here, they’re going to be protected,” Killian told the newspaper.

Killian, along with the FBI special agent that runs the Knoxville office, are set to speak next week to a special meeting with the local Muslim community, informing them about their rights under federal law.

“This is an educational effort with civil rights laws as they play into freedom of religion and exercising freedom of religion,” Killian said about the meeting. “This is also to inform the public what federal laws are in effect and what the consequences are.”

Killian pointed to a recent controversy where a local Tennessee politician posted a photo of a man aiming a shotgun at the camera with the caption “How to wink at a Muslim.”

“If a Muslim had posted ‘How to Wink at a Christian,’ could you imagine what would have happened?” Killian asked, according to the newspaper.

Can we really expect an energetic inquiry into the motivations of Abdulazeez and a comprehensive investigation into any possible assistance he may have received when the US attorney directing the case and the FBI Special Agent in Charge have both expressed the belief that federal law enforcement should be used to harass and punish American citizens for speaking out on Islamic terrorism? Who will investigate the office of the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee to determine how Killian’s seeming fixation of suppression of free speech prevented him from identifying the imminent threat to the life and safety of Americans posed by Abdulazeez?