The United States Department of Justice announced the formation of a new unit designed to address threats of domestic terrorism on Tuesday...
The United States Department of Justice announced the formation of a new unit designed to address threats of domestic terrorism on Tuesday.
According to The Hill, Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olsen announced the new unit to lawmakers and said it would “augment our existing approach.”
“This group of dedicated attorneys will focus on the domestic terrorism threat, helping to ensure that these cases are handled properly and effectively coordinated across the Department of Justice and across the country,” Olsen said.
On the surface, this all sounds great. No sane American would argue that domestic terrorism is a good thing, and working against it should be a common goal.
The problem is that the DOJ has given Americans no reason to believe it is qualified to determine what does and does not constitute domestic terrorism.
For one thing, Attorney General Merrick Garland is an outspoken leftist. As such, he has a propensity to employ bias in his decision-making regarding what actions constitute terrorism.
Additionally, the FBI already has plans in place to fight domestic terrorism. Just last June, Garland announced the Justice Department was set to begin a new national strategy for fighting such crimes, CNN reported. The strategy allocated massive amounts of money to the DOJ, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to address domestic terrorism.
The fact that the DOJ is now employing yet another new tool to monitor American citizens arguably stems from Garland’s left-leaning bias.
One example of this came last year when Garland allegedly mobilized the FBI to track parents who made critical comments about school board members and decisions. According to the New York Post, a whistleblower revealed the FBI had created a “threat tag” for parents.
House Republicans unveiled an email from Criminal Investigative and Counterterrorism divisions to agents asking them to use a tag labeled “EDUOFFICIALS” in November 2021, the Post reported.
“We ask that your offices apply the threat tag to investigations and assessments of threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” the email read.
“The purpose of the threat tag is to help scope this threat on a national level and provide an opportunity for comprehensive analysis of the threat picture for effective engagement with law enforcement partners at all levels.”
Garland had previously denied allegations that he targeted parents, the New York Post reported in a separate article. However, the email suggested he was not telling the full truth.
While parents could raise issues with any number of topics in a school board meeting, the two most common complaints from parents at the time were masks and critical race theory being forced on their children.
Both of those issues have become deeply partisan, and Garland appears to be on the pro-mask, pro-CRT side of the aisle. It is reasonable to assume his characterization of parents as potential domestic terrorists may have been influenced by his political beliefs.
In another example, the DOJ has been accused of treating participants in the Capitol incursion on Jan. 6, 2021, as domestic terrorists, including many Americans who said they never even entered the Capitol building.
According to Garland and the DOJ, domestic terrorists consist of frustrated parents and supporters of former President Donald Trump who waved flags outside the Capitol. Are these really the people we should trust to determine what defines terrorism and how it should be addressed?
Even in his explanation of the new unit on Tuesday, Olsen said the domestic terrorists were increasingly motivated by “racial animus as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.”
Is Olsen referring to Black Lives Matter rioters who burn businesses, or is he talking about Americans who have resisted mask and vaccine mandates?
Again, the overall concern is not whether domestic terrorism needs to be stopped, because there is no question that real terrorism is unacceptable. However, it remains to be seen whether Garland and the FBI will equate “domestic terrorism” to “people who do or say things we disagree with.”
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