New York’s Mayor LOVES The Terrorist Obama Just Released

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio seems to adore the terrorist that President Barack Obama released on his way out of office.

De Blasio tweeted out the following on Tuesday:

Thank you @POTUS for freeing #OscarLopezRivera. Congratulations to all who fought for this day, including Speaker @MMViverito.

— Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) January 18, 2017

De Blasio has previously referred to Oscar López Rivera as a “freedom fighter,” but he is anything but one.

López Rivera is one of the founders of the Puerto Rican Armed Forces for National Liberation (FALN), a terrorist organization that claimed to fight for Puerto Rico’s independence but in reality was a group that hoped to impose Marxism on Puerto Rico. They were even trained by Cuban intelligence.

In total, the FALN terrorists committed 138 bombings from 1974 to 1983. They eluded the FBI for years, but were eventually sentenced to life in prison, with the exception of William Morales, a key FALN bombmaker who fled to Cuba.

However, in 1999, President Bill Clinton, in an attempt to aid his wife’s Senate campaign obtain the Puerto Rican vote, granted clemency to all of the FALN terrorists except for López Rivera, as he declined the Clinton administration’s offer to renounce violence in exchange for clemency. Interestingly, Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign manager at the time was none other than de Blasio.

“What did de Blasio know about the clemencies and when did he know it?,” asked Joseph Connor, whose father died in the FALN’s bombing of the Fraunces Tavern in 1975, at a 2013 press conference. It is “widely believed” that López Rivera was the brains behind the Fraunces Tavern bombing, according to the Power Line blog.

Connor blasted de Blasio as “willfully ignorant” in an email to the Daily Wire.

“I believe de Blasio is willfully ignorant of López’s crimes, putting his terrorist sympathetic ideology above the good of the people of New York,” Connor wrote. “As his comrades said years ago, de Blasio is a useful idiot.”

Connor told the Daily Wire in June that he attended Rivera’s parole hearing in 2011 expecting to hear “a contrite, sincere apology from López Rivera” but instead only heard “obfuscations” and “lies” as Rivera denied any wrongdoing. The parole board ruled that Rivera had to remain in prison until 2023 at the earliest.

When Obama commuted Rivera’s sentence, Connor told City Journal‘s Matthew Hennessey, “López Rivera will answer to a higher authority than Obama.”

Maybe someday de Blasio will have to answer for why he celebrates the release of a terrorist and if it’s related to him running Clinton’s 1999 Senate campaign.

Follow Aaron Bandler on Twitter @bandlersbanter.