Former FBI anti-terrorism specialist Michael German is right in that a bill giving more discretion to the attorney general is not a necessary arrow in the anti-terrorism quiver.
Writing in The Hill, German took to task House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of California, for introducing a bill that would give the attorney general discretionary authority to bring “domestic terrorism” charges against people for what German calls “conduct as inconsequential as mere threats and vandalism.”
As German explains, Schiff’s bill would “dangerously expand the types of crimes that the federal prosecutors could charge as domestic terrorism if the Attorney General certified they were intended to intimidate a civilian population or influence government policy.”
Note that most protests are meant to “influence government policy.” Sometimes they get criminally out of line and should be punished, but that doesn’t mean they are “terrorism.”
German laid out several instances where the government already enjoys arguably too much discretionary authority on terrorism, sometimes misusing it. This isn’t surprising.
Even many of us from the law and order school generally have recognized for years that prosecutorial abuse and “overcriminalization” are also problems. People who have no idea they are breaking the law suddenly get charged for alleged crimes and prosecuted, rather than merely being given advisory warnings. Perhaps the worst was the seafood importer who served eight years in a federal prison for selling a small amount of undersized lobster tails and putting them in plastic instead of the required cardboard.
What the Justice Department needs is more tools to fight real terrorists, not more infractions redefined as terrorism, along with more discretion to pronounce them as such.
Rep. Schiff ought to shift his thinking.
