Trump & ‘terror’
FBI boss: Nix conspiracies; riot all Don fans
FBI Director Christopher Wray told members of Congress on Tuesday that the bloody January attack on their workplace was an act of “domestic terrorism” carried out by Trump-supporting far-right extremists — not left-wing agitators.
Wray’s affirmation, delivered during his first congressional testimony since the 2020 election, was significant in that some Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, have pushed the baseless claim that Antifa adherents posing as “fake Trump supporters” instigated the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
“We have not, to date, seen any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribing to Antifa in connection with the 6th,” Wray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
By the same token, Wray said there’s “no doubt” that the proTrump mob that stormed the Capitol included militia members, followers of the deranged QAnon conspiracy theory and “racially motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”
“I was appalled by the violence and destruction we saw that day,” Wray said. “That siege was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism. It’s got no place in our democracy, and tolerating it would make a mockery of our nation’s rule of law.”
Despite Wray’s debunking, Antifa, a loosely organized leftist movement, was referenced by Republicans at Tuesday’s hearing.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the committee’s top Republican, spent most of his opening statement voicing concern about violence erupting at some left-wing protests in Portland, Ore., over the summer even though the hearing was supposed to focus on Jan. 6.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), echoing an assessment made by the Department of Homeland Security, said Grassley was missing the point.
“We need to be abundantly clear that the white supremacists and other extremists are the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States today,” Durbin said.
Wray’s characterization of the Capitol siege as an act of domestic terrorism highlights the FBI’s growing concern about homegrown far-right extremism.
The FBI director said the bureau is treating the threat of domestic extremism with the same level of urgency as that from international terror groups like ISIS.
“Jan. 6 was not an isolated event,” he said. “The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now and it’s not going away anytime soon.”
Senators on the Judiciary Committee pressed Wray on the security breaches that paved the way for the Capitol riot, which left five people dead, including a police officer, hundreds more wounded and the halls of Congress ransacked.