The FBI has officially opened up a new category of extremists to counter: Trump supporters.
According to an exclusive bombshell from Newsweek on Wednesday, the FBI is shifting its attention from violent deterrence to a focus on Republican voters ahead of the 2024 election. In a June report to Congress, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned of the danger from “DVEs” or “domestic violent extremists” escalating as the nation moves closer to the next election.
“The threats listed,” Newsweek reported, “are all clearly associated with America’s right and in particular with Trump’s MAGA supporters.”
“For the first time, such groups could be so labeled because of their politics,” the paper wrote. “Drilling further into the individual cases behind the numbers, nearly two-thirds of the FBI’s current investigations are focused on Trump supporters and others suspected of violating what the FBI calls ‘anti-riot’ laws.”
The FBI denied in a statement to the magazine that the bureau was targeting Republicans over Democrats.
“These violent extremists have targeted both Republican and Democratic members of Congress,” the FBI said.
According to Newsweek, the bureau is concerned about a repeat of the turmoil at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. Accounting of the carnage from the prior summer, however, shows the nationwide riots in the two-week aftermath of George Floyd’s death cost an estimated 66 times than the hours-long clash between police and protestors at the Capitol. The same effort to deter violent far-left extremists in the wake of what became routine riots throughout the presidential election year was absent.
While the federal intelligence apparatus feigns concern over another episode that played out on Jan. 6, former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund accused the agency of concealing intelligence over the Capitol riot to begin with. Although the FBI and DHS had apparently gathered a cascade of intelligence warning of violence at the Capitol, Sund said his agency received “absolutely zero.”
“None of that was included in the intelligence coming up,” Sund told Tucker Carlson in an interview this summer. “We now know FBI, DHS was swimming in that intelligence. We also know now that the military seemed to have some very concerning intelligence, as well.”
Far-left rioters, however, were free to terrorize main streets from Washington, D.C. to Seattle. In Oregon, Portland’s federal bankruptcy court and the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse were temporarily shut down over attacks from left-wing extremists. Oregon’s largest city ultimately suffered more than 100 consecutive days of demonstrations characterized by violence.
In Seattle, then-Democrat Mayor Jenny Durkan gave demonstrators her blessing while anarchists took over an entire neighborhood and branded the area the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). Durkan called the illegal neighborhood set up by armed warlords a “block party,” wherein protestors “could have the summer of love.”
Consistent with the media treatment between Jan. 6 demonstrators versus 2020 rioters, activist judges handed down heavy sentences for those caught up in the Capitol turmoil while the revolutionaries for so-called “social justice” saw leniency for their antics.
