A top Justice Department official announced the creation of a new “domestic terrorism unit” during his opening remarks before giving testimony focused on the domestic terrorism threat after the Capitol riot.
Matthew Olsen, an assistant attorney general who heads the DOJ’s national security division, appeared before the Democrat-led Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday for a hearing titled “The Domestic Terrorism Threat One Year After January 6.” Olsen, who said DOJ regards the riot as a domestic terrorist act, said the department, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, is heavily focused on the threat.
“Today, investigating and prosecuting domestic violent extremists is one of our top priorities,” Olsen said before adding, “I have decided to establish a domestic terrorism unit to augment our existing approach. This group of dedicated attorneys will focus on the domestic terrorism threat, helping to ensure that these cases are handled properly and effectively coordinated across the Department of Justice and across the country.”
Olsen cited a 2019 mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso that killed 23; the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh that killed 11 people in 2018; the attempted assassination of Republican members of Congress on a Virginia baseball field in 2017; and a mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston that killed nine people in 2015.
“The threat posed by domestic terrorism is on the rise. The number of FBI investigations over the past two years since March 2020 has more than doubled,” Olsen testified, adding, “We have seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.”
Olsen also said DOJ’s investigation into the Capitol riot is “unprecedented.” The Justice Department has arrested at least 725 defendants, and more than 225 have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement officers. However, despite initial hype from a former top DOJ prosecutor, no one has been charged with insurrection or sedition.
The FBI has previously declined to provide a breakdown on exactly how many Capitol riot cases it considers domestic terrorism.
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley noted that “there was almost no mention of left-wing terrorism at all” in a strategy released by the White House last summer. He also asked for details about the violent riots that accompanied Black Lives Matter protests nationwide in 2020.
“In June of this year, our committee was briefed that the FBI had opened more than 500 domestic terrorism investigations as a result of the 2020 riots,” Grassley said. “Of those where the ideology could be identified, 75% were anarchist extremists — anarchist extremism is the FBI term for Antifa. The FBI told us then that they were still trying to hold others accountable for acts during the summer riots.”
Jill Sanborn, the executive assistant director of the FBI’s national security branch, referred to “2020 and the violence that we all saw around the peaceful protests” and said the bureau had opened “slightly more than 800 cases” related to domestic terrorism tied to the 2020 riots. She insisted the FBI is “still making progress on those cases.”
The jointly submitted testimony from Olsen and Sanborn asserted that “we investigate and prosecute domestic violent extremists for their criminal acts, not for their beliefs or based on their associations.”
