The FBI insists it is fully engaged in combating the threat of violence from white supremacists, but some former federal officials charge that the government is coming up short in the face of a strain of terrorism that seems resurgent, the Washington Post reports. The massacre at a Walmart and shopping center in El Paso focused public debate once again on the issue, after federal prosecutors called it an act of domestic terrorism. Senior FBI officials have told Congress they are conducting 850 domestic terrorism investigations, a decrease from the 1,000 a year earlier. The category covers more than just racist violence, but officials say such motivations are a large part of their domestic terrorism caseload.
By other measures, the threat of white nationalist violence appears to be rising. Between October and June, there were about 100 arrests of domestic terrorism suspects. If that trend continues, the total for 2019 would outpace the prior year, when there were about 120 such cases. The year before that, about 150 domestic terrorism suspects were arrested. “We will bring the full resources of the FBI to bear in the pursuit of justice for the victims of these crimes,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said Sunday night. “We, the FBI, don’t investigate ideology, no matter how repugnant,” he said two weeks ago. “When it turns to violence, we’re all over it.” Some counterterrorism experts said the FBI has done too little. Dave Gomez, a former FBI supervisor who oversaw terrorism cases, thinks FBI officials are wary of pursuing white nationalists aggressively because of the fierce political debates surrounding the issue. “There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base. It’s a no-win situation for the FBI agent or supervisor,” Gomez says.
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“There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base. It’s a no-win situation for the FBI agent or supervisor,” Gomez says.
The FBI’s job is to serve and protect! They are not supposed to give a damn about the political ramifications of their investigations. If they do then the Bureau may as well just pack their shit up and become another political hack job agency serving the political aims of the POTUS!