FBI Director Chris Wray spent a long day answering questions on Capitol Hill about what did or didn’t happen in the days leading up to the Capitol riot.
One focus of the Senate hearing was whether the FBI conveyed important information in a timely manner.
Wray insisted his agency properly communicated in multiple ways any and all threats to U.S. Capitol Police and others leading up to Jan. 6 – including intel that groups were preparing for war.
The Senate hearing began with a compelling compilation video of images from the day in question. Wray then focused on the major issue.
“The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now and it’s not going away any time soon,” Wray said. “Racially motivated violent extremism, specifically of the sort that advocates for superiority of the white race, is a persistent evolving threat. It’s the biggest chunk of our motivated violent extremism cases for sure.”
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Many senators asked why information from the FBI Norfolk field office -pointing to plans for the attack and specific congressional threats – didn’t rise to the level of a threat assessment or get passed along before Jan. 6.
Wray testified the information was conveyed in three different ways including electronically and in person.
“It is my understanding that that information was quickly, as in within an hour, communicated with our partners including the U.S. Capitol Police,” Wray said.
He went on to describe the nearly 300 arrests made so far for the Capitol violence and their motivation.
“Militia violent extremism, some instances of racially motivated extremism specifically advocating for the superiority of the white race,” Wray described. “We have not to date seen any evidence of people subscribing to Antifa in connection to violence on the 6th.”
Though the hearing focused on the Jan. 6 event, some say looking at it in a vacuum is a mistake, especially considering weeks of demonstrations last year involving Antifa.
“One of the most upsetting aspects of the violence [last] summer has been the targeting of innocent law enforcement officers just like innocent law enforcement officers were targeting during January 6,” said Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican.
“Vandalizing a federal courthouse in Portland is a crime and should be vandalized to the full extent of the law,” conceded Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). “But it is not equivalent to the violent attempt to overturn the elections, nor is it equivalent to mass shootings targeting minority communities.”
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Wray added, “We don’t care whether it’s up, down, left, right, diagonal or any other way, if the ideology is motivating violence and it violates federal law, we’re coming after it.”
Wray testified that the FBI is working on about 2,000 domestic terrorism investigations, double the number the agency reported four years ago.
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