Biden's FBI has classified MAGA as terrorists

AP Photo/Susan Walsh

A shocking new Newsweek investigative report reveals that the FBI has classified Trump and his supporters as domestic terrorists.

They couch their classification in “nonpartisan” terms, but even they–anonymously, of course–admit that their investigative efforts are directed at the MAGA movement.

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The predicate for this is, of course, January 6th’s riot at the Capitol. Even classifying that event as terrorism is ridiculous on its face, as are the sentences aimed at people who for the most part were nothing but trespassers. I hold no fondness for the riot, which I think was shameful, but practically speaking nothing the rioters did could possibly be negatively compared to what the 2020 George Floyd rioters did.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y committed the same crime that many of the January 6th rioters were convicted and sentenced for. I think we can expect that he will not be deemed a terrorist.

The Newsweek report is troubling for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that, aside from the January 6th riot, the FBI uses their investigation of MAGA supporters as proof that MAGA supporters are terrorists. It is the most bizarre circular reasoning, made necessary by the fact that there are essentially no instances of actual terrorist acts by Trump supporters.

We investigated them, therefore they are terrorists. They are terrorists, therefore they need to be investigated. Rinse, repeat.

OK. Makes sense.

The federal government believes that the threat of violence and major civil disturbances around the 2024 U.S. presidential election is so great that it has quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers.

The challenge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the primary federal agency charged with law enforcement, is to pursue and prevent what it calls domestic terrorism without direct reference to political parties or affiliations—even though the vast majority of its current “anti-government” investigations are of Trump supporters, according to classified data obtained by Newsweek.

“The FBI is in an almost impossible position,” says a current FBI official, who requested anonymity to discuss highly sensitive internal matters. The official said that the FBI is intent on stopping domestic terrorism and any repeat of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. But the Bureau must also preserve the Constitutional right of all Americans to campaign, speak freely and protest the government. By focusing on former president Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters, the official said, the Bureau runs the risk of provoking the very anti-government activists that the terrorism agencies hope to counter.

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Well, duh. Just as the FBI labeled parents objecting to pornographty as terrorists, proving that the FBI is weaponized against conservatives, they are not targeting Trump supporters, which sort of proves the Trump supporters’ point.

The FBI is a corrupt, partisan organization.

Newsweek has also reviewed secret FBI and Department of Homeland Security data that track incidents, threats, investigations and cases to try to build a better picture. While experts agree that the current partisan environment is charged and uniquely dangerous (with the threat not only of violence but, in the most extreme scenarios, possibly civil war), many also question whether “terrorism” is the most effective way to describe the problem, or that the methods of counterterrorism developed over the past decade in response to Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups constitute the most fruitful way to craft domestic solutions.

“The current political environment is not something that the FBI is necessarily responsible for, nor should it be,” says Brian Michael Jenkins, one of the world’s leading terrorism experts and senior adviser to the president of the RAND Corporation.

This is enraging, if not surprising. I keep pounding on the fact that the West is moving toward a Chinese-style police state, and unfortunately Western leaders keep proving me right. Aside from January 6th, it is difficult to see what exactly fits into the category of even modest right-wing violence.

Look around, folks, the Left is committing violent acts all the time. The George Floyd riots. The huge uptick in murders. Leftists storming into capitols regularly. Terroristic mass shootings like the one in Nashville.

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I don’t classify these as Democrat violence, of course, because they aren’t. But the threat is almost entirely from the Left, and everybody knows it. Climate change protesters are constantly breaking the law. In Atlanta there has been steady violence over a police training center.

But it is supporters of Trump who threaten the country? Please.

What the FBI Data Shows:

From the president down, the Biden administration has presented Trump and MAGA as an existential threat to American democracy and talked up the risk of domestic terrorism and violence associated with the 2024 election campaign.

“Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country,” President Biden tweeted last September, the first time that he explicitly singled out the former president. “MAGA Republicans aim to question not only the legitimacy of past elections but elections being held now and into the future,” Biden said.

Biden’s Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall said: “The use of violence to pursue political ends is a profound threat to our public safety and national security…it is a threat to our national identity, our values, our norms, our rule of law—our democracy.”

Notice how there is rhetoric here, but no actual specification of what acts have taken place. “Threats” they say, but what “threats?” Anything Trump says they consider a threat. But that is a threat to their power, not to innocent people. Being a Republican is not a threat to the country, but only to the Democrat Party.

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“Threats from…DVEs [domestic violent extremists] have increased in the last two years, and any further increases in threats likely will correspond to potential flashpoints, such as high-profile elections and campaigns or contentious current events.”

The FBI and DHS report concludes: “Sociopolitical developments—such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence—will almost certainly spur some domestic terrorists to try to engage in violence.”

It’s all unspecific. And, as we have seen the FBI raid pro-life activists’ homes and point guns at children, we have a pretty good idea of what the FBI considers terroristic threats and actions:

The threats listed in that paragraph are all clearly associated with America’s right and in particular with Trump’s MAGA supporters. Right after January 6, the FBI co-authored a restricted report (“Domestic Violent Extremists Emboldened in Aftermath of Capitol Breach, Elevated Domestic Terrorism Threat of Violence Likely Amid Political Transitions and Beyond”) in which it shifted the definition of AGAAVE (“anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism”) from “furtherance of ideological agendas” to “furtherance of political and/or social agendas.” For the first time, such groups could be so labeled because of their politics.

It was a subtle change, little noticed, but a gigantic departure for the Bureau. Trump and his army of supporters were acknowledged as a distinct category of domestic violent extremists, even as the FBI was saying publicly that political views were never part of its criteria to investigate or prevent domestic terrorism. Where the FBI sees threats is also plain from the way it categorizes them—a system which on the surface is designed to appear nonpartisan.

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By now it is clear that the FBI is fatally compromised–at least when it comes to defending Americans’ freedoms. It has become Joe Biden’s Stasi, although frankly that is only a continuation of a trend that began under Obama. After all, the FBI actively engaged in a conspiracy to lie to the American public, deceive the courts, and commit a soft coup against Donald Trump.

Comey, Strzok, Paige, and the whole FBI leadership actively conspired to get rid of a duly elected president using a Hillary Clinton-created hoax. That is not really in dispute any more. Now they are going one step further: targeting Trump supporters as terrorists for having the wrong beliefs.

But the FBI went further in October 2022 when it created a new subcategory—”AGAAVE-Other”—of those who were a threat but do not fit into its anarchist, militia or Sovereign Citizen groups. Introduced without any announcement, and reported here for the first time, the new classification is officially defined as “domestic violent extremists who cite anti-government or anti-authority motivations for violence or criminal activity not otherwise defined, such as individuals motivated by a desire to commit violence against those with a real or perceived association with a specific political party or faction of a specific political party.”

Though Trump and MAGA are never mentioned in the official description of AGAAVE-Other, government insiders acknowledge that it applies to political violence ascribed to the former president’s supporters.

“What other name could we use?” asks one FBI officer who spoke with Newsweek, and who defends what he says is merely a record-keeping change in response to Congressional pressure to track things better. “Obviously if Democratic Party supporters resort to violence, it [AGAAVE-Other] would apply to them as well. It doesn’t matter that there is a low likelihood of that. So yes, in practical terms, it refers to MAGA, though the carefully constructed language is wholly nonpartisan.”

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Read the whole sorry piece in Newsweek. It is elliptical, not directly saying the FBI is participating in a partisan witch hunt, but the evidence is all right there.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 20, 2024
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