“What we discovered was that there was a shocking number of people involved in that insurrection who seemingly live normal lives, working in government and law enforcement and the military,” Murphy told The Daily Beast. “It’s really dangerous for individuals who hold these types of views to receive a security clearance and access to classified information… if any Americans participated in the Capitol attack, or if they subscribe to these dangerous anti-government views of QAnon, then they have no business being entrusted with our nation’s secrets.”
Murphy’s bill, one of the first legislative efforts crafted in response to the terror on display two weeks ago, is a sign of how sharply the policy agenda of Congress and President Joe Biden in the coming weeks and months has shifted with respect to right-wing extremism.
At her Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Avril Haines, Biden’s choice for intelligence chief, pledged to produce a public threat assessment of QAnon, using intelligence compiled by the 18 agencies under her umbrella as director of national intelligence. And Alejandro Mayorkas, the nominee to head up the Department of Homeland Security, also vowed to ramp up the agency’s efforts to tackle domestic extremism in his Tuesday confirmation hearing.
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