This reporting from the Daily Beast is something:
Nikolas Cruz, the man accused of killing 17 people in a Florida high school, was a member of a “white separatist paramilitary proto-fascist organization,” the group told The Daily Beast.
Cruz, 19, is accused of opening fire inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Prior to the shooting, he trained with the Republic of Florida, the group’s captain Jordan Jereb said (as first reported by the Anti-Defamation League). The RoF seeks to create a “white ethnostate” in Florida, according to its website, a view that Cruz supposedly shared.
Daily Beast is also saying the group claims to have given the shooter a gun and trained him, which might have made him more effective.
But is it true? From the outset, law enforcement didn’t confirm the story. Another day of reporting and no law enforcement agency has found ground to substantiate and perhaps some to the contrary.
It seems unbelievable.
But