After four months of nearly non-stop nightly riots and destruction in Portland, which have included shooting and killing a Trump supporter, multiple assaults of bystanders, attacking media, people being dragged out of their cars and beaten, buildings set on fire with people inside, molotov cocktails being thrown at police, and other nefarious acts, all at the hands of violent leftists associated with Antifa and Black Lives Matter, Department of Homeland Security agents officially reveal what they consider to be the number one terror threat in the area; “Right wing extremists” and strawmen “white supremacists.”
That’s right, the federal agency seemingly ignores the 100+ nights of violence and mayhem caused by crazed leftists, and instead makes mountains out of molehills involving right-wing Trump supporters.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed anti-fascists, known as antifa, are a serious threat to suburban populations. Trump stood in front of a crowd in Michigan on Sept. 10 and repeated his claim about anti-fascists planning to infiltrate the suburbs.
However, Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the federal Department of Homeland Security, acknowledged to Congress this week that white supremacists are the “most persistent and lethal” domestic threat to the U.S. Internal records also indicate the greater threat likely came from armed vigilantes roaming the streets in search of “antifa.”
Racially motivated extremists and ad-hoc citizen militias appear to present the most pronounced threat of violence to human life, according to a Joint Intelligence Bulletin circulated to law enforcement in June by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center.
The report appears to use “domestic violent extremists” in place of white supremacists when it describes the highest threat of lethal acts of terrorism, a change in Department of Homeland Security terminology first reported by the national security blog Lawfare after leaked drafts of an annual threat assessment report were obtained by the publication.
“Based upon current information, we assess the greatest threat of lethal violence continues to emanate from lone offenders with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist (RMVE) ideologies and [domestic violent extremists] with personalized ideologies,” the June bulletin says, without referring to white supremacists directly.
The Joint Intelligence memo is titled “Domestic violent extremists could exploit current events to incite or justify attacks on law enforcement of civilians engaged in First Amendment-protected activities.”
The memo is dated June 8 and came less than two weeks after protests against police violence started in Portland. Protesters have routinely damaged public property and businesses and thrown fireworks at buildings and officers.
The report obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive says federal officials deemed demonstrators a threat to buildings and police.
“Anarchist extremists continue to pose the most significant threat of targeted assaults against police, as well as targeting government buildings and police vehicles for damage, sometimes with improvised incendiary devices,” the June bulletin says.
But the other conclusions of the memo — that white supremacists and self-styled militias are a serious threat to human life — vary vastly from the traditional rhetoric of the president and federal government. The memo concludes some white supremacists and militia extremists are trying to bring about a second civil war by “intentionally instigating violence.”
Wolf’s testimony to Congress was the highest-profile acknowledgment by the Trump administration of the significance of the right-wing threat.
