A day after President Biden declared white supremacism “the most lethal” terrorist threat, a senior official said the Justice Department is “actively considering” whether to seek a new law allowing prosecutors to bring specific charges for plotting and carrying out acts of domestic terrorism.
“One of the things we’re looking at is would we need new authorities,” Brad Wiegmann, deputy assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s national security division, said during a House hearing Thursday, Bloomberg reported.
Reacting to the announcement, noted civil-liberties journalist Glenn Greenwald pointed out opposition to such a law has been raised from across the political spectrum. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is among the opponents.
Arguing for the law, Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa., chairman of the powerful Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, emphasized the need to counter “right-wing” groups.
“This is a cancer on our country,” he said. “Right-wing extremist attacks and plots have greatly outnumbered those from all other groups combined and caused more deaths as well.”
However, both Islamic and white supremacist terror have become rare, never accounting for more than 1% of all homicides in any given year, with the notable exception of 2001, argues Matt Palumbo for The Bongino Report.
The 9/11 attacks resulted in many more deaths than every white supremacist terror incident in the 21st century combined, he pointed out. And recently, Islamic terrorist groups such as ISIS have been decimated, thanks to President Trump’s policies.
Proponents argue that in contrast to international terrorism, there is no U.S. law that allows the government to designate domestic extremists as terrorists or bring specific charges for domestic terrorism. Current laws allow the government to designate international groups and bring charges for providing them with material support.
At the hearing Thursday, Wiegmann said the Justice Department has combatted domestic violations through laws regarding weapons, explosives, hate crimes and arson.
“The question we’re really wrestling with is: Are there gaps?” Wiegmann told a House Appropriations subcommittee. “Is there some type of conduct that we can envision that we can’t cover or would it be an otherwise benefit in having something else other than what we’re having now?”
Wiegmann also said that in March, the Justice Department directed U.S. attorney’s offices nationwide to notify headquarters in Washington of any investigations and cases related to domestic extremism.
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