ARGUMENT: Wrong focus How Trump’s Focus on Antifa Distracted Attention from the Far-Right Threat

Published 1 February 2021

In response to Donald Trump’s election-related insistence that the radical left endangered the country, federal law enforcement shifted resources last year from what experts agreed was a more ominous threat: the growing far-right extremism around the country. Trump’s efforts to focus his administration on the antifa movement and leftist groups did not stop the DOJ and the FBI from pursuing cases of right-wing extremism, but the effect of his direction was nonetheless substantial. The scale and intensity of the threat developing on the right became clear on 6 January.

As racial justice protests erupted nationwide last year, President Donald Trump, struggling to find a winning campaign theme, hit on a message which he repeated over and over: The real domestic threat to the United States emanated from the radical left, even though law enforcement authorities had long since concluded it came from the far right.

Adam Goldman, Katie Benner and Zolan Kanno-Youngs write in the New York Times that it was a message which was quickly embraced and amplified by Attorney General William Barr and the political appointees at DHS. That message was “translated it into a shift in criminal justice and national security priorities even as Mr. Trump was beginning to openly stoke the outrage that months later would culminate in the storming of the Capitol by right-wing extremists.”

The NYT reporters note that Trump’s efforts to focus his administration on the antifa movement and leftist groups did not stop the DOJ and the FBI from pursuing cases of right-wing extremism. They broke up a kidnapping plot, for example, targeting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat.

But the effect of his direction was nonetheless substantial, according to interviews with current and former officials, diverting key portions of the federal law enforcement and domestic security agencies at a time when the threat from the far right was building ominously.

The reporters write that

·  In late spring and early summer, as the racial justice demonstrations intensified, Justice Department officials began shifting federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents from investigations into violent white supremacists to focus on cases involving rioters or anarchists, including those who might be associated with the antifa movement. One Justice Department prosecutor was sufficiently concerned about an excessive focus on antifa that the official went to the department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, telling his office that politics might have played a part.

·  Federal prosecutors and agents felt pressure to uncover a left-wing extremist criminal conspiracy that never materialized, according to two people who worked on Justice Department efforts to counter domestic terrorism. They were told to do so even though the F.B.I., in particular, had increasingly expressed concern about the threat from white supremacists, long the top domestic terrorism threat, and well-organized far-right extremist groups that had allied themselves with the president.

·  White House and Justice Department officials stifled internal efforts to publicly promote concerns about the far-right threat, with aides to Mr. Trump seeking to suppress the phrase “domestic terrorism” in internal discussions, according to a former official at the Department of Homeland Security.

·  Requests for funding to bolster the number of analysts who search social media posts for warnings of potential violent extremism were denied by top homeland security officials, limiting the department’s ability to spot developing threats like the post-Election Day anger among far-right groups over Mr. Trump’s loss.

The scale and intensity of the threat developing on the right became stunningly clear on 6 January, the NYT reporters write.