12-12-2021
White supremacy is top security threat, Garland says
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland told Congress on Wednesday that violence incited by white supremacists poses
“the most dangerous threat to our democracy.”
That assertion reflects near-universal consensus among national security experts, including those who worked for the Trump administration.
Garland’s warning came during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which was conducted by supporters of then-President Donald Trump and incited by white supremacist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Five people died as a result of the attack.
“In my career as a judge and in law enforcement, I have not seen a more dangerous threat to democracy than the invasion of the Capitol calling the attack an “attempt to interfere with a fundamental element of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power.”
The attorney general went on to say that
“there has to be a hierarchy of things that we prioritize.
This would be the one we’d prioritize.”
“The horror of domestic violent extremism is still with us,” He noted that encrypted internet messaging and the increased availability and sophistication of
“lethal weaponry” make the threat of domestic terror greater than it has ever been.
Some of the Trump administration’s own top advisers came to the same conclusions.
Last fall, the FBI warned about extremists planning violent actions to coincide with November’s presidential election.
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security tried to get Trump to pay attention to white nationalist groups, some of which expressed open affinity for him and his political movement.
Testifying alongside Garland was Alejandro Mayorkas, who heads the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans questioned him intensely about the situation on the border with Mexico, in what appeared to be another attempt to turn the hearing away from Jan. 6.
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