Joe Biden was sworn in as president 14 days after the Capitol incursion on Jan. 6, 2021. From the beginning, he used that event as a bloody shirt to wave whenever the Department of Justice introduced a new initiative aimed at combatting “domestic terrorism.”
Early on in his presidency, the White House issued a fact-sheet saying their counterterrorism strategies were going to be focusing on “much more dangerous forms of terrorism we’ve seen from ISIS and al-Qaida.”
“[T]he two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat are (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 fact-sheet read.
Plenty of other high-profile measures against so-called “domestic terrorism” have been launched by the administration and its Democrat allies, including a bill that would, among other things, create an “interagency task force” to sniff out “white supremacist and neo-Nazi infiltration of the uniformed services and federal law enforcement agencies.” (It failed in the Senate.)
(Here at The Western Journal, we’ve chronicled how the Biden administration has continued to abuse the events of Jan. 6 to call for unprecedented measures to fight “domestic terrorism” — and how this will affect ordinary Americans who have done nothing wrong. We’ll continue to fight for your rights. You can help us by subscribing.)
However, after all of this hullaballoo, whistleblowers say the FBI wasn’t able to turn up enough cases of “domestic terrorism” to fit the narrative — so agents were pressured into classifying cases as domestic terrorism even if they weren’t.
The whistleblowers’ accusations were made public in a letter from GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday, according to the Daily Wire.
“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,” Jordan wrote.
“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.”
Is ‘domestic terrorism’ the greatest threat America faces?
According to Jordan, the whistleblowers have alleged that agents are being cajoled into reclassifying cases via incentives.
And, if the carrot doesn’t work, there’s also the stick; one whistleblower alleged high-level FBI officials were creating de facto quotas for DVE cases.
“We have received accusations that FBI agents are bolstering the number of cases of DVEs to satisfy their superiors,” Jordan wrote.
“For example, one whistleblower explained that because agents are not finding enough DVE cases, they are encouraged and incentivized to reclassify cases as DVE cases even though there is minimal, circumstantial evidence to support the reclassification.”
“Another whistleblower — who led at least one high profile domestic terrorism investigation — stated that a field office Counterterrorism Assistant Special Agent in Charge and the FBI’s Director of the Counterterrorism Division have pressured agents to move cases into the DVE category to hit self-created performance metrics,” the letter continued.
“According to whistleblowers, the FBI uses these metrics to dispense awards and promotions. Every whistleblower has called it an environment of ‘pressure’ within the FBI.”
? #BREAKING ?
Whistleblowers: FBI Leadership Pressuring Agents to Artificially Pad Domestic Terrorism Data pic.twitter.com/fGuQbUbjX3
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) July 27, 2022
As Jordan noted, the “whistleblower allegations that the FBI is padding its domestic violent extremist data cheapens actual examples of violent extremism.”
The new allegations, he added, bolster “our concerns — about which we have written to you several times — regarding the FBI’s politicization under your leadership.”
“As we have detailed, multiple whistleblowers have disclosed how the Biden FBI is conducting a ‘purge’ of FBI employees holding conservative views,” the letter read.
“It appears instead that the FBI is more focused on classifying investigations to meet a woke left-wing agenda.”
The letter asked for pertinent documents about “domestic violent extremism” cases and how they were classified, to be provided no later than Aug. 10.
This isn’t the first whistleblower report out of the FBI or Department of Justice to raise alarms, either.
On Monday, GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa wrote FBI Director Wray regarding the way allegations of influence-peddling against Hunter Biden were handled, with allegations that “verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation” and that “an avenue of derogatory Hunter Biden reporting was ordered closed” by a senior FBI agent just one month before the 2020 election, according to CBS News.
In addition, there have been other whistleblowers who have come forward and alleged the “domestic terrorist” tag had been applied to groups that weren’t a threat, including parents’ rights groups that organized protests at school board meetings.
On Oct. 4, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo ordering the FBI to “use its authority” to respond to what he called a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff.”
Whistleblowers later alleged the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division created a tag for investigations into these parents’ groups, titled “EDUOFFICIALS.”
If these reports are true, the domestic terror threat that the administration has been crowing about since the moment it got into office simply doesn’t exist. And, not only that, the FBI is asking its agents to make up the threat if they can’t actually find it.
Whatever the case, it’s time for Wray to provide some clarity on how the bureau is handling these “domestic violent extremists” — and how many of them really exist.
