The former head of the National Counterterrorism Center said he would not be surprised if right-wing domestic terrorist groups stage attacks in the United States around this November’s presidential election.
“It certainly wouldn’t surprise me, particularly if the administration loses,” said Russ Travers, who was the center’s acting director when he was fired by Trump’s hand-picked acting director of national intelligence.
Travers, who was interviewed by Yahoo News before the publication of the DHS analysis, said in a subsequent phone call that he had not seen the document and was unaware of its existence. Nonetheless, Travers said the difference between the small number of violent left-wing activists and the larger threat posed by right-wing groups is so significant as to be a case of “night and day,” and was the main reason why, when it came to domestic terrorism, the counterterrorism center decided to focus exclusively on white supremacist groups.
“In the heartland, they were asking our reps more and more questions on the domestic terrorism side, rather than the Islamist side,” he said. At roughly the same time, Travers said, he was hearing from a wide range of sources, including members of Congress and the leaders of social media firms, “that the domestic terrorism problem — and primarily the right-wing side of the domestic terrorism problem — was a growing concern for people.
Travers believes that “there probably is more domestic terrorism out there than we realize,” because in the absence of a domestic terrorism statute, local law enforcement officials tend to treat “any murder that occurs anywhere” as a simple crime. “But what is the motivation behind that crime?” he said “Was it a white supremacist thing or not? That may not be catalogued or tracked, and in all likelihood it’s not.
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