NO WRAY G-MAN!
GOPers scoff at FBI boss’ claim Antifa isn’t group
House Republicans on Thursday tangled with FBI Director Christopher Wray after he said Antifa exists but is “kind of a movement” or ideology and “not an organization.”
Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee that self-identified Antifa, or “antifascist,” activists were involved in violent unrest following the Memorial Day death of George Floyd at the hands of Minnesota police, but that the FBI does not consider Antifa a group per se.
Republican Reps. Dan Crenshaw of Texas and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey told Wray they disagreed.
“That seems to me to be downplaying it,” Crenshaw told Wray.
“This is an ideology that organizes locally, it coordinates regionally and nationally, it wears a standardized uniform, it collects funds to buy high-powered lasers to blind federal officers, builds homemade explosive devices, feeds their rioters since they clearly aren’t working and then bails out those who’ve been arrested,” Crenshaw countered.
“This is an ideology that has trained its members, makes shield wall phalanxes to attack federal officers, formed an autonomous zone in an American city and besieged a federal courthouse in another. So, I mean, it just seems to be more than an ideology.”
Van Drew told Wray, “There’s something out there that deserves a very thorough investigation,” scoffing at the idea of Antifa being a “loosely knit group of people.”
“In my mind, there is Antifa, there is a group — a group or individuals that control Antifa and have some authority over it. And it is to some degree, without question, organized,” Van Drew said.
The former Democrat, who switched parties last year, said, “If we have an organization that is able to communicate among different counties, different states, different areas, different cities — is able to organize when Black Lives Matter also organizes at the same time, advertises for people to help them and they will pay them, feed them . . . and takes care of them, that to me would be more than just the loosely knit group of people.”
Wray also rejected a common Democratic claim that Antifa doesn’t even exist. Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, for example, said in July that Antifa was “a myth.”
“Antifa is a real thing,” Wray said. “It’s not a group or an organization. It’s a movement or an ideology, maybe one way of thinking of it.”
President Trump tweeted in May that the US government “will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” but that hasn’t happened yet.