McArdle writes: "FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress on Tuesday that the majority of domestic-terrorism arrests since last October have been linked to white supremacy."
FBI director Christopher Wray. (photo: Getty)
FBI Director: White-Supremacist Violence Accounts for Majority of Domestic-Terrorism Arrests Since Last October
26 July 19
BI director Christopher Wray told Congress on Tuesday that the majority of domestic-terrorism arrests since last October have been linked to white supremacy.
�I will say that a majority of the domestic-terrorism cases that we�ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white-supremacist violence, but it does include other things as well,� the FBI chief said in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Wray explained that since October, the FBI has arrested about 100 people on international-terrorism charges and about the same number of individuals on charges related to domestic extremism.
The FBI director emphasized that his investigators� �focus is on the violence.�
�We the FBI don�t investigate the ideology, no matter how repugnant. We investigate violence. And any extremist ideology, when it turns to violence, we�re all over it,� Wray said. �We take domestic terrorism or hate crime � regardless of ideology � extremely seriously, I can assure you, and we are aggressively pursuing it using both counterterrorism resources and criminal investigative resources and partnering closely with our state and local partners.�
President Trump has repeatedly come under fire for using rhetoric that his opponents say encourages violent, racist tendencies. Critics have warned that violence resulting from white-supremacist ideologies has been on the rise since Trump took office.
�I don�t, really,� Trump said in March when asked if he thinks white nationalism is a growing threat. �I think it�s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.�
The highest-profile act of violence perpetrated by a white supremacist over the last few years occurred at a 2017 white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., where one of the male rally-goers murdered one counter-protesters and injured dozens of others by mowing them down with his car. The man has received several life sentences for his crimes.
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