Kristen Welker Grills Kristi Noem on Trump Administration Granting Asylum to National Guard Shooting Suspect

NBC News’s Kristen Welker repeatedly asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to explain whether the Trump administration fully vetted the suspected National Guard shooter from Afghanistan when it granted him asylum last spring.

Noem, however, maintained that it was the Biden administration’s responsibility to vet Afghans after the fall of Kabul.

Twenty-nine-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal is accused of having shot and killed one National Guardsman and leaving another in critical condition the day before Thanksgiving. Trump administration officials have placed the blame squarely on Biden for allowing the refugees to enter the country without being “fully vetted.”

“You say he was radicalized here,” Welker began. “This suspect, we should note, was a member of the CIA trained strike force. According to former intelligence and military officials, he would’ve undergone extensive vetting during his tenure there. And afterwards, it is worth noting, Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency which is a part of DHS, approved the suspect’s asylum application in April of this year.”

Welker asked pointedly, “Why did the Trump administration grant the suspect asylum in April?”

Noem skipped talking about asylum altogether, answering:

The vetting process, Kristen, happens when the person comes into the country. And Joe Biden completely did not vet any of these individuals, did not vet this individual. Waited until he got into the United States, and then that application for asylum was opened under the Joe Biden administration, when he was the president in the White House, and allowed that to go forward with the information that they provided. That’s the Biden administration’s responsibility. This is the consequences of the dangerous situation he put our country in when he allowed those people to infiltrate our country during that abandonment of Afghanistan.

Welker continued pushing:

WELKER: But I just want to be very clear about this, because his asylum was approved in April of this year, on the Trump administration’s watch. So just to be very clear, was there a vetting process in place to approve that asylum request?

NOEM: Yeah, the vetting process all happened under Joe Biden’s administration.

WELKER: But was he vetted when he was granted asylum—

NOEM: That is what is so broken—

WELKER: Are you saying he wasn’t vetted when he was granted asylum—

NOEM: —is that they didn’t. Vetting is happening when they come into the country, and that was completely abandoned under Joe Biden’s administration. That’s the irresponsibility that has completely devastated our country, Kristen…But under this program, we could have up to 100,000 people that came in from Afghanistan that may be here to do us harm.

Watch the clip above via NBC News’s Meet The Press.