18 Sep 2020 5:39 pm
THE FBI DIRECTOR JUST BLEW UP TEAM TRUMP’S ANTI-ANTIFA WAR PLAN
It’s an ideology, not an organization, said Christopher Wray, while telling Congress something else Trump won’t want to hear: Violent white supremacists are a domestic terrorist threat.
On Thursday, FBI Director Christopher Wray directly contradicted the White House’s anti-antifa messaging push while testifying in front of the House Homeland Security Committee.
“It’s not a group or an organization. It’s a movement or an ideology,” he said, explaining that “folks who subscribe or identify” with antifa do not operate at a national level, but instead organize “regionally into small groups or nodes.”
When asked about the greatest domestic terrorism threats facing the U.S., Wray did not name antifa.
Instead, he cited the kinds of violent extremists historically more likely to side with the president.
“Within the domestic terrorism bucket, the category as a whole, racially motivated violent extremism is, I think, the biggest bucket within that larger group, within the racially motivated violent extremist bucket,” said Wray.
“People ascribing to some kind of white supremacist-type ideologies is certainly the biggest chunk of that.”
The bureau chief went on to note that, when it comes to extremist violence in the U.S., 2019 was the deadliest year since 1995, when white supremacist Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people by bombing a federal building in Oklahoma City.
Wray did make a statement in line with what Trump officials have said about investigating members of antifa along with other extremists: “To be clear, we do have quite a number of properly predicated domestic terrorism investigations into violent anarchists, extremists, any number of whom self-identify with the antifa movement, and that’s part of this broader group of domestic violence extremists that I’m talking about,” he said. ”
But it’s just one part of it.”
But Wray’s classification of antifa as a movement, rather than a structured group, goes against unfounded claims Trump has made about antifa, including that there was an “entire plane filled up with looters, the anarchists, rioters” flying from city to city “looking for trouble” during the height of the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
In August, Senator Rand Paul floated a similar conspiracy theory, saying that protesters who gathered outside the White House during the Republican National Convention were “paid” employees in an organized “interstate criminal” gang.
It’s an ideology, not an organization, said Christopher Wray, while telling Congress something else Trump won’t want to hear: Violent white supremacists are a domestic terrorist threat.
On Thursday, FBI Director Christopher Wray directly contradicted the White House’s anti-antifa messaging push while testifying in front of the House Homeland Security Committee.
“It’s not a group or an organization. It’s a movement or an ideology,” he said, explaining that “folks who subscribe or identify” with antifa do not operate at a national level, but instead organize “regionally into small groups or nodes.”
When asked about the greatest domestic terrorism threats facing the U.S., Wray did not name antifa.
Instead, he cited the kinds of violent extremists historically more likely to side with the president.
“Within the domestic terrorism bucket, the category as a whole, racially motivated violent extremism is, I think, the biggest bucket within that larger group, within the racially motivated violent extremist bucket,” said Wray.
“People ascribing to some kind of white supremacist-type ideologies is certainly the biggest chunk of that.”
The bureau chief went on to note that, when it comes to extremist violence in the U.S., 2019 was the deadliest year since 1995, when white supremacist Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people by bombing a federal building in Oklahoma City.
Wray did make a statement in line with what Trump officials have said about investigating members of antifa along with other extremists: “To be clear, we do have quite a number of properly predicated domestic terrorism investigations into violent anarchists, extremists, any number of whom self-identify with the antifa movement, and that’s part of this broader group of domestic violence extremists that I’m talking about,” he said. ”
But it’s just one part of it.”
But Wray’s classification of antifa as a movement, rather than a structured group, goes against unfounded claims Trump has made about antifa, including that there was an “entire plane filled up with looters, the anarchists, rioters” flying from city to city “looking for trouble” during the height of the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
In August, Senator Rand Paul floated a similar conspiracy theory, saying that protesters who gathered outside the White House during the Republican National Convention were “paid” employees in an organized “interstate criminal” gang.