Thompson, Rose, Slotkin Write FBI on Domestic Terrorism Investigations
“This information is urgently sought given serious concerns about violence surrounding the November election”
(WASHINGTON) – Today, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Max Rose (D-NY), Chairman of the Intelligence & Counterterrorism Subcommittee, and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray to seek more information on the FBI’s open investigations related to domestic terrorism, particularly related to white supremacist extremism and militia extremism. Last week, Director Wray testified before the Committee that the FBI has been having “roughly 1,000 domestic terrorism investigations a year. It’s higher than that this year…A good bit north of 1,000 this year.”
“In the course of this Committee’s oversight, we have become well aware that certain specific organizations, including white supremacist extremist groups and militia extremist groups, as well as unstructured leaderless movements such as Boogaloo, have been linked to domestic terrorist violence in recent years. We simply seek to understand the data and aggregate trends as the FBI perceives them in order to understand the contours of the threat and how the federal government is countering it,” the lawmakers wrote.
Although the Committee believes this information is critical given the rise of domestic terrorism, the FBI has not been forthcoming with this information. In fact, under a new Federal law spearheaded by Chairman Thompson, a report containing data on current FBI terrorism investigations was due to Congress in June. The Administration has yet to provide Congress with this data.
Link to FBI Response (November 13, 2020)
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