Fatuous Furor
Moralizing won’t help combat domestic terror
Afederal investigation targeting 14 cosplaying members of armed Michigan militia groups, including the Wolverine Watchmen, appears to be on life support.
The paramilitary extremists got busted plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as revenge for her COVID-19 lockdown mandates. The fanatics’ mistake? Conspiring with undercover FBI agents and informants.
Five members of the group go on trial March 8 in Grand Rapids federal court for their roles in the scheme. One is cooperating with authorities. Eight others face state charges related to providing material support for terrorism.
This case would be tough enough for the feds to win on its merits, as undercover operations are always a tricky minefield of built-in defense arguments of entrapment. Add prosecutors’ shocking announcement they would not call three FBI agents with sizable roles in the investigation to testify due to charges of misconduct. These charges are egregious and absolutely imperil the government’s case.
But is this effort another recent instance of “egregious [government] overreach” — which defendants’ attorneys charge in court filings?
Maybe, maybe not. But it definitely speaks to the misguided fervor with which Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice is desperate to prove that right-wing extremists are the gravest threat to the republic in 2022. It’s utter woke nonsense.
I feel zero sympathy for the right-wing extremist yahoos at the center of the kidnapping plot. But this case highlights yet another less-than-subtle example of the moralizing pursuit to amend our domestic-terror laws.
Much of what has been offered by those pushing this is useless. As former federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg and retired FBI agent Tom O’Connor suggest, these efforts would “close a moral equivalency gap in the law” while putting “all terrorists, foreign and domestic, on the same footing.” In other words, these proposed changes are nothing more than window dressing.
This orthodoxy’s adherents — former federal prosecutors and FBI agents — heroically attempt to make the misguided case that America’s criminal-justice system continues to treat terrorists and criminals differently, depending on their ideologies or skin color. Hogwash. Yes, our system is imperfect. Show me one that isn’t. Perfectionism is illusory in fallible human constructs.
But we have an array of investigatory tools at our disposal in the international-terror realm that aren’t available when investigating US citizens. There’s a reason.
The Wolverine Watchmen plot is a perfect example of domesticterror conspiracy. But we cannot employ “left of boom” surveillance techniques (like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) on citizens because of the Constitution: in particular, that pesky Fourth Amendment. Foreign terrorists are not entitled to “Each man’s home is his castle” protections. While proponents of new domestic-terror laws sheepishly acknowledge that punishment for such acts are no different than what could be gained by establishing new laws, for them, it’s about progressive orthodoxy.
To be clear, the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide highlights the caution investigators must exercise when balancing law-enforcement powers and our constitutional liberties in its chapter four, “Privacy and Civil Liberties and Least Intrusive Methods.” An unclassified version of the DIOG is available online and worth perusing as it highlights how circumspect we need to be when balancing security with cherished civil liberties.
Want to know how kooky this foolhardy pursuit has gotten? Ben
Weingarten recently pointed out the lunacy in Newsweek, noting that Biden’s DOJ just announced it’s “building a new domestic terror unit, despite the fact that it has never clearly demonstrated a commensurate threat. To put the purported peril in perspective, an FBI official noted there were four domestic violent extremist attacks in 2021, resulting in 13 deaths. By comparison, last year there were more than 800 murders in a single city, Chicago.”
Woke policy strikes again. Certainly the Biden DOJ understands that of the 18,814 terror deaths across the globe in 2017, just four far-left groups (ISIS, the Taliban, al-Shabab, Boko Haram) were responsible for 10,632 — nearly 57%. We are simply crafting feel-good policy for political goals.
We have enough laws on the books to combat terrorism. We do not need any more. Building up bogeymen to satisfy moralequivalency goals also doesn’t make us safer. Let the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies determine where finite resources need be positioned and — here’s a novel idea — prosecute all violations of the laws currently on the books. This is something the political left’s progressive prosecutor movement seeks to avoid at all costs.
The paramilitary clowns in Michigan will face justice. No additional laws can add to the stiff penalties they are facing. No new DOJ “domestic-terror unit” will make investigating terrorists more effective. Why is this so difficult to comprehend?
James A. Gagliano is a retired FBI supervisory special agent and doctoral candidate in homeland security at St. John’s University.