San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Focus on antifa pulled feds’ eyes from far right
WASHINGTON — As racial justice protests erupted nationwide last year, former President Donald Trump, struggling to find a winning campaign theme, hit on a message that he stressed over and over: The real domestic threat to the United States emanated from the radical left, even though law enforcement authorities had long since concluded it came from the far-right.
The message was quickly embraced and amplified by his attorney general and his top homeland security officials, who translated it into a shift in criminal justice and national security priorities even as Trump was beginning to openly stoke the outrage that months later would culminate in the storming of the Capitol by right-wing extremists.
Trump’s efforts to focus his administration on the antifa movement and leftist groups did not stop the Justice Department and the FBI from pursuing cases of right-wing extremism. They broke up a kidnapping plot, for example, targeting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat.
But the effect of his direction was nonetheless substantial, according to interviews with current and former officials, diverting key portions of the federal law enforcement and domestic security agencies at a time when the threat from the far-right was building.
• In late spring and early summer, as the racial justice demonstrations intensified, Justice Department officials began shifting federal prosecutors and FBI agents from investigations into violent white supremacists to focus on cases involving rioters or anarchists, including those who might be associated with the antifa movement.
Federal prosecutors and agents felt pressure to uncover a left-wing extremist criminal conspiracy that never materialized. They were told to do so even though the FBI in particular had increasingly expressed concern about the threat from white supremacists, long the top domestic terrorism threat, and far-right extremist groups that had allied themselves with the president.
White House and Justice Department officials stifled internal efforts to publicly promote concerns about the far-right threat, with aides to Trump seeking to suppress the phrase “domestic terrorism” in internal discussions.
Requests for funding to bolster the number of analysts who search social media posts for warnings of potential violent extremism were denied by top homeland security officials, limiting the department’s ability to spot developing threats.
The scale and intensity of the threat developing on the right became stunningly clear Jan. 6, when news broadcasts and social media were flooded with images of far-right militias, followers of the QAnon conspiracy movement and white supremacists storming the Capitol.
Trump’s focus on antifa was embraced by Attorney General William Barr. Barr had long harbored concerns about protests
and violence from the left. Soon after taking office in early 2019, he began a weekly national security briefing by asking the FBI what it was doing to combat antifa.
Officials viewed his sense of the threat as exaggerated. They explained that it was not a terrorist organization, but rather a loose movement without an organization or hierarchy. Still, department investigators felt pressured to find evidence that antifa adherents were conspiring to conduct coordinated terrorist attacks.
When FBI intelligence continued to deem white nationalists the leading domestic terrorism threats — part of what the bureau describes as racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists — prosecutors were asked to also consider information from the Department of Homeland Security that antifa and radical leftist anarchists were instead the leading threats.
Investigators at the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security moved quickly and forcefully to address the violence that erupted amid the summer’s racial justice protests. The demonstrations gave way to looting and rioting, including serious injuries and shootings in Portland, Ore., and other cities.
Over the late spring and summer, the FBI opened more than 400 domestic terrorism investigations, including about 40 cases into possible antifa adherents and 40 into the boogaloo, a right-wing movement seeking to start a civil war, along with investigations into white supremacists suspected of menacing protesters.
Members of violent militias began to go to protests, sometimes saying they had heeded Trump’s call. Still, Justice Department leadership was adamant that terrorism investigators focus on antifa.
The small cadre of intelligence analysts inside the department’s counterterrorism section were pulled into the effort. National security prosecutors staffed command
posts at the FBI to deal with the protests and associated violence and property crimes.
All of this was a strain on the counterterrorism section, which has only a few dozen prosecutors and like other parts of the department was reeling from the coronavirus. The counterterrorism section at the time was working with prosecutors and agents around the country on cases involving people affiliated with militia members and violent white supremacists. In some cases, agents who had been investigating violent white supremacists pivoted to investigate anarchists and others involved in the rioting, struggling at times to find any federal charges to bring against them.
Around the same time, the FBI was tracking worrisome threats emanating from the far-right. After six members of a violent, antigovernment militia called Wolverine Watchmen were charged in October with plotting to abduct Whitmer, one of Trump’s most vocal opponents, the president insulted her and claimed that the left posed the true threat. “She calls me a White Supremacist — while Biden and Democrats refuse to condemn Antifa, Anarchists, Looters and Mobs that burn down Democrat run cities,” Trump said on Twitter.
Dozens of FBI employees and senior managers were sent on
temporary assignments to Portland, where left-leaning protests had intensified since tactical federal teams arrived. Some FBI agents and Justice Department officials expressed concern that the Portland work was a drain on the bureau’s effort to combat the more lethal strains of domestic extremism. The bureau had about 1,000 domestic terrorism cases under investigation at the time and only several hundred agents in the field assigned to them.
Domestic terrorism has long been a politically sensitive issue for the Department of Homeland Security. A warning in a 2009 homeland security report that military veterans returning from combat could be vulnerable for recruitment by terrorist groups or extremists prompted backlash from conservatives.
Like Barr, Trump’s acting homeland security secretary, Chad Wolf, took his lead from the White House and emphasized the threat from antifa.
Trump said in May that he intended to designate antifa a domestic terrorist organization. National Security Council staff members asked homeland security officials for evidence to justify such a designation. They sought information about possible ties between antifa and foreign entities; designations of terrorist organizations are limited to foreign groups.
In fact, the FBI had seen troubling evidence of white supremacists in the United States with foreign ties, including one group, the Base, that agents believe was being directed by an American living in Russia.
Homeland security officials balked at helping designate antifa as a terrorist organization, and the effort failed.
Last spring, Brian Murphy, then the homeland security intelligence chief, requested $14 million to increase staff to analyze social media for extremist threats, given that online forums had become a prime recruiting and organizing
ground.
Wolf’s deputy, Kenneth Cuccinelli II, rejected the request. Cuccinelli defended the move, saying requests for additional funding would have come at the expense of other parts of the agency.
Campaigning for reelection, Trump spent the summer blaming rioting and violence on Democratic governors and mayors and warning about a “left-wing cultural revolution.”
Armed far-right militia groups started appearing at racial justice protests and demonstrations. Extremists groups like the Proud Boys marched in Washington in December, clashing with antiTrump protesters in altercations that included stabbings.
The Homeland Security Department’s intelligence branch issued an assessment Dec. 30 highlighting the potential for white supremacists to carry out “mass casualty” attacks. But there was no specific mention of armed groups targeting the Capitol, despite plenty of indicators online. The acting chief of the Capitol Police, Yogananda Pittman, later said that the department knew militias and white supremacists would be coming, “that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target.”
In the days before Jan. 6, the Secret Service was told by homeland security officials to expect only an “elevated threat environment.”
The Trump administration, however, continued to play up the threat of antifa. The night before the assault on the Capitol, the White House issued a memo seeking to bar any foreigners affiliated with antifa from entering the country and, once again, try to determine if the movement could be classified as a terrorist organization.
When the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, some shouted explicit chants against antifa. Others were captured on video yelling, “We were invited by the president of the United States.”