Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

How long before FBI Director Chris Wray is told to drop this white supremacist terrorism assessment or lose his job?

The FBI has elevated its assessment of the threat posed by racially motivated violent extremists in the U.S. to a "national threat priority" for fiscal year 2020, FBI director Christopher Wray said Wednesday. He said the FBI is placing the risk of violence from such groups "on the same footing" as threats posed to the country by foreign terrorist organizations such as ISIS and its sympathizers.
"Not only is the terror threat diverse — it's unrelenting," Wray said at an oversight hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.

Racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, or domestic terrorists motivated by racial or religious hatred, make up a "huge chunk" of the FBI's domestic terrorism investigations, Wray said in statements before the Senate Homeland Security Committee last November. The majority of those attacks are "fueled by some type of white supremacy," he said.

Wednesday, Wray said combating domestic terrorism and its "close cousin," hate crimes, are at the "top of the priority list" for the FBI.

His statements indicate the FBI is just as concerned about racially-motivated violent extremists, including white supremacists, as it is about the threat posed by homegrown violent extremists inspired by foreign terrorist organizations. Wray said both pose a grave threat because the perpetrators are often "lone actors," self-radicalized online, who often look to attack "soft targets" such as public gatherings, retail locations or houses of worship.

In many cases, perpetrators can move quickly from rhetoric to violence, Wray said.

"They choose easily accessible weapons — a car, a knife, a gun, maybe an IED they can build crudely off the internet — and they choose soft targets," Wray said. "That threat is what we assess is the biggest threat to the homeland right now."

Racially-motivated violent extremists were the primary source of ideologically-motivated violence in 2018 and 2019 and have been considered the most lethal of all domestic extremists since 2001, Wray said in a statement Wednesday.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have evolved on the issue of threats posed by domestic extremists over the last year or so, reports CBS News' Jeff Pegues, and federal law enforcement officials have faced criticism that they've been sluggish in their response to the increased risk posed by white supremacists and other racially-motivated violent extremists. The public message from federal law enforcement has changed as the threats have intensified.

In March of 2019, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen insisted Islamist militants such as al-Qaida and ISIS, and those inspired by them in the U.S., remained the country's "primary terrorist threat," but said the department was focused on all kinds of violent extremism.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Trump mentioned the fight against "radical Islamic terrorism" but not the terror threat fueled by other forms of hate.

I can't imagine Wray will still be FBI Director for too much longer.   House Republicans are already gunning for him, which means Senate Republicans will be too.

The head of the FBI on Wednesday batted back criticism from House Republicans that he hadn't done enough to reform the law enforcement agency after the release of a report that detailed the bureau's failures in the Russia investigation. 

In his first public testimony on Capitol Hill since the release of the Justice Department's inspector general report late last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray was critical of the officials accused of wrongdoing in the report, and outlined a number of steps he was making to change protocol at the agency as a result. 

But his response before the House Judiciary Committee was too tepid for a number of conservative lawmakers, who demanded a "thorough and complete public house cleaning" and a "clear, unambiguous expression of moral outrage." 

President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress have seized on the findings in the inspector general report about a series of errors made by the FBI as it sought a surveillance warrant on a former Trump campaign aide under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. 

The Justice Department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, has said that he did not have enough evidence to conclude the motivation behind those errors, and the attorney general has suggested they could have been made in "bad faith." 

Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican, drew audible protests from lawmakers after declaring he'd lost trust in the agency after the findings of the Horowitz report. 

"I don't trust your agency anymore. And that's a profound thing for me to say, because I was raised to revere the FBI," McClintock said.

The FISA "mismanagement" will be the official reason Wray is fired, but the reality will be that Trump will want an FBI director completely loyal to him not the FBI rank and file or to law enforcement.  He needs somebody as crooked as Bill Barr, and Wray still has slivers of his soul.

No, Trump will dump Wray going forward.  He won't stop at retaliation against impeachment witnesses.  He'll need an FBI Director willing to send people to kick down doors of more powerful people on his enemies list.  Friday night was only the beginning.