Former FBI Official Will Testify About White House Pressure to Inflate Domestic Extremism Numbers
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee announced on Thursday that they would be calling a former top FBI official to testify before Congress to address claims that the Biden administration pressured agents to label cases as domestic extremism or a white supremacist threat even if they did not meet that criteria in order to match Joe Biden’s rhetoric.
Last month, current and former FBI agents came forward claiming the Biden administration has been deliberately exaggerating the danger posed by white supremacists. According to the whistleblowers, high-ranking FBI officials were pressuring field agents to fabricate domestic terrorism cases and label people as white supremacists in order to “meet internal metrics.”
“The demand for white supremacy” coming from FBI brass “vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy,” one agent told the Washington Times. “We have more people assigned to investigate white supremacists than we can actually find.”
“We are sort of the lapdogs as the actual agents doing these sorts of investigations, trying to find a crime to fit otherwise First Amendment-protected activities,” one whistleblower said. “If they have a Gadsden flag and they own guns and they are mean at school board meetings, that’s probably a domestic terrorist.”
On December 2, members of the House Judiciary Committee will interview Jill Sanborn, a former assistant director of the FBI Counterterrorism Division and executive assistant director of its National Security Branch, who has been accused of pressuring agents to reclassify cases per the White House’s requests.
The FBI claims it only investigates those “who commit or intend to commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security” and that it does not target individuals or organizations based on their political beliefs.
Last year, the administration previously came under fire for using the resources of the Department of Justice to target angry parents at school board meetings and treat them like domestic terrorists. Merrick Garland authorized the FBI to investigate parents who protested school board meetings alleging a “disturbing trend” of teachers being threatened or harassed. However, PJ Media’s Megan Fox looked into those allegations and concluded that they’re mostly bunk.
In addition, the National School Boards Association (NSBA), which had prompted Garland to write the memo with a letter likening parents to domestic terrorists, eventually apologized for doing so. Despite this, Garland has not rescinded the memo. Late last year, a whistleblower revealed an internal email showing that the FBI was using counterterrorism tools to monitor parents despite Garland denying before Congress that the FBI was doing so. This summer, whistleblowers revealed that the FBI “pressured and incentivized” agents to classify cases as domestic violent extremism.
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