released a transcript of the calls Omar Mateen made during the shooting rampage at an Orlando nightclub a week ago. 

a conversation with NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said references to Islamic terrorism would be removed.

has reversed course. A complete transcript of Mateen’s phone call has been released.]

struggling to define a terrorist’s self-proclaimed act of terror as terrorism.

several references to Islam, so sanitizing the report to conceal Mateen’s religious fervor does not seem to be the primary motive either. 

So why is the government scrubbing references to Islamic State in the transcript?

said the editing was being done to spare families members from being “re-victimized,” an explanation that does not seem to concur with the release of the transcripts to begin with.) 

Another possibility is that the government is attempting to shape the theory Mateen was a lone wolf with no legitimate connection to ISIS.

There are other plausible explanations, including the possibility that Mateen named someone in the call whom the FBI does not want to be publicly identified.

Redacting the information, on the other hand, feeds into the narratives that the White House is either hiding something or refusing to properly classify Islamic terrorism as such.