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FBI whistleblowers claim domestic terror threat inflation

Ben Weingarten Federalist Senior Contributor; Claremont Institute Fellow
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The U.S. continues to grapple with domestic terrorist violence that FBI Director Christopher Wray characterized last year as a problem “metastasizing around the country.” Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan sees it differently, claiming recently that 14 whistleblowers told him that “FBI employees were pressured to reclassify crimes as domestic terrorism.” Straight Arrow News contributor Ben Weingarten believes the expanded definition of “threats” is yet another example of “The Regime” making up facts and redefining the issues:

Would it shock you to learn the FBI was cooking the books about what it claims is the greatest threat to the homeland? That’s what Congressman Jim Jordan alleges. FBI whistleblowers told him they’re being pressured to reclassify investigations as domestic violent extremism when they shouldn’t be, and that they’re being rewarded for it. Which is to say, they’re inflating the threat our Ruling Class tells us is driven overwhelmingly by those who disagree with it to justify a sprawling War on Wrongthinkers.

The Ruling Class has equated dissent with danger, cast dissenters as domestic terrorists, and mobilized against them under America’s first ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. Yet authorities have never substantiated their claims about the threat. 

We’re just supposed to take their word for it—that The Deplorables endanger the republic, from the same agencies that brought us Russiagate, framing the Ultimate Deplorable as a traitor. What little evidence the security state has produced is lacking: It shows falling domestic terror arrest numbers, or cites a few attacks each year resulting in fewer casualties than we see in cities like Chicago every month. The big number they point to is a doubling in domestic terrorism investigationsWhich brings us to Jordan’s revelations.

Recently he pressed Matthew Olsen, head of DOJ’s National Security Division on the allegations. Olsen said the growing terror threat used to justify the opening of a new DOJ domestic terror unit is primarily driven by those “motivated by racial or ethnic animus,” and others “hold[ing] anti-government or anti-authority views.”

So it created a broad and liberal definition that could cover tens of millions of people—namely conservatives, since their views are cast as “anti-government or anti-authority” and/or rooted in “racial or ethnic animus.”

This is threat inflation.

Would it shock you to learn the FBI was cooking the books about what it claims is the greatest threat to the homeland? That’s what Congressman Jim Jordan alleges.

FBI whistleblowers told him they’re being pressured to reclassify investigations as domestic violent extremism when they shouldn’t be, and that they’re being rewarded for it. 

Which is to say, they’re inflating the threat our Ruling Class tells us is driven overwhelmingly by those who disagree with it to justify a sprawling War on Wrongthinkers.

The Ruling Class has equated dissent with danger, cast dissenters as domestic terrorists, and mobilized against them under America’s first ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

Yet authorities have never substantiated their claims about the threat. 

We’re just supposed to take their word for it—that The Deplorables endanger the republic, from the same agencies that brought us Russiagate, framing the Ultimate Deplorable as a traitor.

What little evidence the security state has produced is lacking: It shows falling domestic terror arrest numbers, or cites a few attacks each year resulting in fewer casualties than we see in cities like Chicago every month.

The big number they point to is a doubling in domestic terrorism investigationsWhich brings us to Jordan’s revelations.

Recently he pressed Matthew Olsen, head of DOJ’s National Security Division on the allegations.

JIM JORDAN: you talked in your opening statement about the number of domestic terrorism threats, multiple whistleblowers are coming to our office telling us that they are being pressured to categorize cases as domestic terrorism threats that aren’t — and I’m just wondering because it was the opening of your statement — most of your statement — you talked about this new office. Do you feel you are reducing the numbers?

MATTHEW OLSEN: I’m not aware of the references you’re making to the whistleblowers

Olsen also said:

MATTHEW OLSEN: We follow the evidence and the law and we take on the issue of domestic terrorism without regard to politics or ideology. We have seen a rise, particularly in lethal attacks by individuals motivated by racism

This would be news to the non-violent Jan. 6-ers held in pretrial detention for months on end, and Steve Bannon, John Eastman, and Jeffrey Clark, to name a few.

Olsen said the growing terror threat used to justify the opening of a new DOJ domestic terror unit is primarily driven by those “motivated by racial or ethnic animus,” and others “hold[ing] anti-government or anti-authority views.”

So it created a broad and liberal definition that could cover tens of millions of people—namely conservatives, since their views are cast as “anti-government or anti-authority” and/or rooted in “racial or ethnic animus.”

This is threat inflation.

We see it when Homeland Security classifies dissenters from Covidian orthodoxy and skeptics of U.S. election integrity as dangers, alongside parents the FBI slapped a threat tag on for opposing woke local school boards.

We see it in law enforcement’s apparent role in hatching the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

And we see it in the feds’ approach to the Capitol breach. 

Set aside questions the Whitmer case raises about what government assets were doing on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, and why authorities won’t answer questions about it. 

The FBI director classified Jan. 6 as a domestic terror attack. DOJ’s Counterterrorism Section is prosecuting cases. Prosecutors have sought a terrorism enhancement in at least one case.

Yet strain though they do to make Jan. 6 equal 9/11, they can’t: The sole person killed that day was a protestor, shot by a Capitol Cop.

Of eight weapons charges—out of hundreds of largely non-violent alleged ones—none involved arms brought into the Capitol.

Trump called for supporters to march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically” to make their voices heard. He said that in a speech delivered while Capitol grounds were already being breached. Days earlier he called for thousands of National Guardsmen to be posted to D.C. 

So he wanted to prevent his own coup? The facts belie the narrative, which is what these whistleblowers would seem to be revealing too about the FBI’s whole domestic terror focus. 

So now they’re fudging the facts—it’s no shock from a regime redefining “recession,” or “vaccination” to redefine critics as domestic terrorists and pursue them accordingly.

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