After Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel indicated during his appearance on CNN’s State of the Union that he actually knew that Deputy Scott Peterson seemingly froze during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, anchor Jake Tapper relentlessly grilled the sheriff over the missed red flags on shooter Nikolas Cruz. And Tapper eventually pushed the sheriff over what appeared to be his unwillingness to take responsibility.

“Let’s talk about them in February 2016 your office received a call that the shooter made a threat on Instagram to shoot up a school,” Tapper asked. “One of your deputies responded and according to your records, the information was forwarded to deputy Peterson at the school. What, if anything, was done with that information?”

Israel stated that he wasn’t sure anything was done with that information before stating that the majority of the calls made about Cruz were handled appropriately. This led to a back and forth between Tapper and Israel over whether or not the sheriff’s office ignored the warning signs.

We then witnessed this remarkable exchange between the two men:

Tapper: “Are you really not taking any responsibility for the multiple red flags that were brought to the attention of the Broward sheriff’s office about this shooter before this incident, whether it was people near him, close to him calling the police –” Israel: “Jake, Jake — Jake, I can only take responsibility for what I knew about. I exercised my due diligence. I’ve given amazing leadership to this agency –” Tapper: “Amazing leadership?” Israel: “Yes, Jake. There’s a lot of things we’ve done throughout this — this is — you don’t measure a person’s leadership by a deputy not going in to — these deputies received the training they needed.” Tapper: “Maybe you measure somebody’s leadership by whether or not they protect the community. You’ve listed 23 incidents before the shooting involving the shooter and still nothing was done to keep guns out of his hands, to make sure that the school was protected, to make sure you were keeping an eye on him — I don’t understand how you can sit there and claim amazing leadership?”

After Israel defended his office and said he’d taken it to “new level,” the CNN host continued to grill him over Cruz being able to legally buy a gun despite the threats he had made in the past.

Watch the clip above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Justin Baragona on Twitter: @justinbaragona

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