Multiple FBI whistleblowers have stepped forward to House Republicans to claim that the agency’s leadership has been pressuring agents to ‘artificially pad domestic terrorism data’ by inappropriately classifying cases to meet quotas.
“From recent protected disclosures, we have learned that FBI officials are pressuring agents to reclassify cases as ‘domestic violent extremism’ even if the cases do not meet the criteria for such a classification,” wrote Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in a Wednesday letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“Given the narrative pushed by the Biden administration that domestic violent extremism is the ‘greatest threat’ facing our country, the revelation that the FBI may be artificially padding domestic terrorism data is scandalous,” Jordan continues.
🚨 #BREAKING 🚨
Whistleblowers: FBI Leadership Pressuring Agents to Artificially Pad Domestic Terrorism Data pic.twitter.com/fGuQbUbjX3
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) July 27, 2022
“The Biden administration’s narrative may be misleading,” Jordan writes. “One whistleblower explained that because agents are not finding enough DVE [domestic violent extremism] cases, they are encouraged and incentivized to reclassify cases as DVE cases even though there is minimal, circumstantial evidence to support the reclassification.”
“This information … reinforces our concerns regarding the FBI’s politicization under your leadership,” Jordan continued, noting that there had been an alleged “purge” of conservative FBI employees, and that the agency seems “more focused on classifying investigations to meet a woke left-wing agenda” than addressing congressional concerns.
Notably, the FBI created a ‘domestic terrorism’ unit in January after prioritizing the threat of “white extremism” as the most pressing domestic security concern.
This followed a June 2020 report that the White House’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism had defined the “the two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat” as : (1) racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race and (2) anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, such as militia violent extremists.”
“The Justice Department is establishing a specialized unit focused on domestic terrorism, the department’s top national security official told lawmakers Tuesday as he described an elevated threat from violent extremists in the United States,” The Associated Press reported in January. The unit was described as necessary to handle the “more than double” the number of suspected violent extremism cases which have popped up since spring of 2020, according to Congressional testimony this week of Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen.
“We have seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies,” Olsen stated.
The specialized domestic terrorism unit, he described, is further necessary to “to augment our existing approach” – despite the DOJ already having a counterterrorism section within National Security Division, and such cases also long being handled by FBI units.
Does this new FBI department exist to prevent domestic terrorism or to perpetrate it, like that time the FBI hatched a plan to kidnap and kill Michigan’s governor? https://t.co/niR5dVm51n
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) January 11, 2022
And remember how Biden’s Secretary of Education reportedly requested a ‘domestic terrorism’ letter from a school boards group, after parents angry about COVID-19 mandates and Critical Race Theory (among other things) showed up to school board meetings to voice their displeasure?
Then, in May, Senate Republicans blocked a bill to create domestic terrorism offices within federal law enforcement agencies in response to the Buffalo, NY mass shooting that left 10 people dead.
“The bill is so important because the mass shooting in Buffalo was an act of domestic terrorism. We need to call it what it is, domestic terrorism. It was terrorism that fed off the poison of conspiracy theories like white replacement theory,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said just before the vote.
Leader Schumer on the domestic terrorism bill: “This is a test; this is about accountability. Republican Senators: do you reject the views of MAGA Republicans? Do you reject white supremacy and replacement theory? Taking a stand … should be the easiest thing in the world.”
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 25, 2022
As Sen. Rand Paul said in a floor speech at the time; “Today we will have a bill before us ostensibly titled and ostensibly about the subject of domestic terrorism. But this bill would be more accurately called the Democrat plan to brand and insult our police and soldiers as White supremacists and neo-Nazis – how insulting.”
