By Zachary Cohen, Evan Perez, Kristen Holmes, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump is blaming the Biden administration for this week’s shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC, in part by insisting that the suspect, a 29-year-old Afghan, was among millions of foreigners Biden allowed into the US without proper vetting.

Details about the alleged shooter’s background, including his previous work for the CIA in Afghanistan, and conversations with sources familiar with the vetting process, paint a far more complicated picture.

While investigators have yet to establish a clear motive for the shooting, the incident is likely to rekindle concerns over the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the haste with which thousands of evacuees were brought to the US.

Trump officials have suggested a breakdown in vetting is likely tied to the attack, while the president is already using it as a reason to further his crack down on immigrants in the US, including reevaluating the green card status of foreign nationals from a variety of countries.

In a video address from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida late Wednesday, Trump argued the attack carried out by a lone gunman “underscores the single greatest national security threat facing our nation.”

“We must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country,” Trump said.

The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was among more than 190,000 Afghans admitted into the US following its withdrawal from Afghanistan, under programs designed to resettle those who helped the US during its 20-year war in the country.

Over the course of more than a decade, sources told CNN, Lakanwal underwent numerous rounds of vetting — starting around 2011 by the CIA when he began working with the US military and intelligence agencies — and ending earlier this year when he was approved for permanent asylum in the US by the Trump administration.

In 2021, Lakanwal was part of a prioritized group evacuated from Kabul after the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban. Due to his work for the US, including serving in an elite Afghan counterterrorism unit, Lakahwal was considered to be at risk of retribution once the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.

Once evacuated, Lakanwal went through what sources told CNN were multiple layers of vetting by multiple US government agencies — first in a Middle Eastern country, according to one source familiar with the matter — and then regularly over the past few years while he was residing in the US.

In April, Lakanwal, who lived in Washington state, was granted permanent asylum by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

In June, the Justice Department released the results of an audit into the FBI’s role in facilitating screening Afghans brought to the US after the 2021 withdrawal. The audit, conducted by the department’s Inspector General, found no systemic breakdowns in the multi-layered process, involving various federal agencies, that was established at the time to screen and vet Afghan evacuees.

The report does acknowledge, however, that “the normal processes required to determine whether individuals posed a threat to national security and public safety were overtaken by the need to immediately evacuate and protect the lives of Afghans, increasing the potential that bad actors could try to exploit the expedited evacuation.”

Concerns about the thoroughness of vetting for people admitted into the US after the Afghanistan withdrawal have caused angst in US security agencies for years.

In 2023 and 2024, intelligence obtained from allies prompted the FBI to raise concerns about the thoroughness of vetting for Afghan and Central Asian asylum seekers, current and former US officials said.

Rampant use of fraudulent identification documents and the use of fixers with ties to terrorist groups were a primary concern.

The FBI sent agents to investigate the backgrounds of dozens of people who had been admitted to the US, and the reinvestigations prompted some removals, the officials said.

Still, others disagree the vetting process is to blame for the shooting.

“We don’t think this is a vetting issue,” said Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac, a non-profit group involved in helping resettle thousands of Afghans after the US withdrawal in 2021.

Talking to CNN’s Becky Anderson Friday, VanDiver ticked through the extensive amount of screening Afghans like Lackanwal went through — including leading up to him attaining asylum this year.

“People that came on the planes in August of 2021, they were vetted before they left. They were vetted when they went to a third country to continue their processing. They were vetted by [Customs and Border Patrol] and USCIS before they arrived here. While they were here, and awaiting adjustments of status, they were continuously vetted,” VanDiver said.

“This is one man who, as the president said, ‘went cuckoo’ and took a deranged action that is not broadly indicative of the Afghan community at all,” VanDiver added.

A Trump administration official pushed back on the notion that there was any semblance of normal protocol in place during this time.

“The government was in shambles and in the process of being taken over by the Taliban. Our understanding, and what we’ve seen documented, is that there was very little vetting going on,” the official said.

Multiple layers of vetting

The first round of vetting that Lakanwal received around 2011 by the CIA focused on determining whether he could safely work with US intelligence and military personnel in Afghanistan, according to a senior US official.

At the time, the CIA would have done its own vetting of Lakanwal through a variety of databases, including the National Counterterrorism Center database, to see if he had any known ties to terrorist groups, the senior official said.

Lakanwal was vetted again a decade later by the NCTC during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, before he was allowed entry into the US.

“In terms of vetting, nothing came up,” the senior US official told CNN, noting the review did not show any ties to terror organizations. “He was clean on all checks.”

The senior official noted that the US government had been doing continuous, annual vetting of individuals since the Afghans’ arrival in the US, especially in the wake of the failed terror plot disrupted before the election last year in Oklahoma which involved an Afghan evacuee.

Trump’s NCTC Director Joe Kent confirmed in a tweet Friday that Lakanwal was previously vetted by the US intelligence community while he was still overseas, but noted that screening was focused on his ability to serve alongside American forces in Afghanistan — not whether he was fit to become a permanent US resident.

“It is true that the terrorist who conducted the attack in D.C. was ‘vetted’ by the intelligence community, however he was only vetted to serve as a soldier to fight against the Taliban, AQ, & ISIS IN Afghanistan, he was NOT vetted for his suitability to come to America and live among us as a neighbor, integrate into our communities, or eventually become an American citizen,” Kent said in the post.

Kent also accused the Biden administration of using that same standard for allowing individuals entry into the US during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, “foregoing previous vetting standards applied to Special Immigrant Visas and any common sense vetting or concern for Americans.”

“As a result, over 85k Afghans—including individuals with backgrounds similar to this shooter— were rapidly admitted into our country without the rigorous vetting that has protected us in the past,” he claimed.

A chaotic withdrawal

In 2021, the Biden administration was under immense pressure from veterans groups to evacuate Afghans who had worked with American soldiers, some taking it upon themselves to help get people out of the country. The sense of urgency during that chaotic withdrawal raised bipartisan concerns about the screening process for Afghans who were ultimately admitted into the US.

That was due in part to the sheer volume of Afghans who were coming to the US and the urgency of the evacuation itself, which came as the US-backed government in Kabul was collapsing.

All of those factors contributed to concerns about the ability to accurately verify the identify of those being let into the US and vet them accordingly.

That process is now under intense scrutiny as Trump calls for a reexamination of every person from Afghanistan who came to the US under President Joe Biden, and criticizes what he says were millions of “unknown and unvetted foreigners” admitted to the country under his predecessor.

On Thursday, the administration announced it will reexamine all green cards issued to people from 19 countries “of concern” at Trump’s direction.

“At the direction of @POTUS, I have directed a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern,” Joe Edlow, the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, wrote in a post on X Thursday.

Asked for additional details, including which countries are considered to be “of concern,” USCIS pointed CNN to 19 countries listed in a June presidential proclamation.

The 19 countries include Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees USCIS, said Thursday the administration is also reviewing all asylum cases that were approved under former President Joe Biden.

“Effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to CNN, adding, “The Trump Administration is also reviewing all asylum cases approved under the Biden Administration.”

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