US FBI Director Kash Patel said on Thursday that the suspected shooter of two National Guard members had worked in Afghanistan with partner forces.
“We are thoroughly investigating that aspect of his background as well to include any known associates who are overseas or here in the United States of America, which is what a broad-based international terrorism investigation looks like,” Patel said at a news conference.
Investigators led by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force searched for clues about what led the immigrant to open fire on two National Guard soldiers just blocks from the White House in what officials called an “ambush” attack on Thanksgiving Eve.
The suspect worked with “the U.S. government, including the CIA, as a member of an associated force in Kandahar” during the U.S. war in Afghanistan, CIA Director John Ratcliffe told the newspaper. New York Times and fox news.
The two soldiers, part of a militarized law enforcement mission ordered by President Donald Trump months ago and challenged in court by officials in Washington, D.C., were hospitalized and had undergone surgery, Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
The suspect, who was wounded in an exchange of gunfire before being arrested, was identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national.
Bondi said fox news Thursday that the two wounded soldiers were a man and a woman.
He said the U.S. government planned to file terrorism charges against the gunman and seek a life sentence “at a minimum.”
Processing of Afghan immigration applications halted
Trump, who was at his Florida resort at the time of the attack, released a pre-recorded video statement Wednesday night calling the shooting “an act of evil, an act of hate and an act of terror.” He said his administration would “re-examine” all Afghans who came to the United States during Joe Biden’s presidency.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency later said it had indefinitely paused processing of all immigration applications related to Afghan nationals, “pending further review of security and background check protocols.”
According to the DHS, Lakanwal entered the United States in 2021 under Operation Welcome Allies, a Biden-era program to resettle thousands of Afghans who helped the United States during the Afghanistan war and feared retaliation from Taliban forces who took control of their homeland after the US withdrawal.
NBC NewsCiting an interview with an unnamed relative of the suspect, it reported early Thursday that Lakanwal served in the Afghan military for 10 years alongside U.S. Special Forces troops and was stationed in Kandahar for part of that time.
The relative also said Lakanwal was working for online retail giant Amazon.com when they last spoke several months ago, according to NBC News.
DHS did not include other details of his immigration history, but a Trump administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Lakanwal applied for asylum in December 2024 and was approved on April 23 of this year, three months after Trump took office.
Lakanwal, 29, who resided in Washington state, had no known criminal history, the official said.
The shooting took place at noon outside a subway station in a bustling shopping area a few blocks from the White House. Secret Service agents locked down the presidential mansion immediately after the shooting as a precaution.
In response to Wednesday’s shooting, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the president had asked to send another 500 National Guard troops to join the more than 2,000 Guard troops previously mobilized in the nation’s capital.
Vice President JD Vance, who was in Kentucky on Wednesday, said in a post on X that the shooting showed the Trump administration’s immigration policy was justified.
“We must redouble our efforts to deport people who have no right to be in our country,” he said.
Critics of the Trump administration’s immigration policy say it has employed harsh illegal tactics and indiscriminately swept up immigrants, including some without criminal records and others who are in the United States legally.
Attack in front of metro station
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has openly clashed with Trump over the deployment of Civil Guard troops in her city, told reporters hours after the incident that “this is a targeted shooting.”
At the same news conference, Jeff Carroll, executive deputy chief of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, said the two Guard soldiers were “ambushed” and that the known assailant appeared to have acted alone.
The two soldiers, members of the West Virginia National Guard, were on “high-visibility patrol” outside the entrance to a subway station when the suspect “turned the corner,” pulled out a gun and immediately shot the couple, Carroll said.
After an exchange of gunfire, other National Guard troops subdued the suspect, he said.
Trump said in August that he was ordering the deployment of the National Guard to combat crime in a city he said had become unsafe, despite objections from District of Columbia officials who challenged the move in court as a breach of local government control.
