The most heartbreaking part of this threat not being taken as seriously as it should have is that, if it had been, people in law enforcement on all levels may have paid more attention to intel they received before January 6th, greatly diminishing the insurrection if not stopping it altogether.

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A 2023 report by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s majority staff, titled Planned in Plain Sight, said that, even though FBI agents were being briefed about potential violence planned for January 6th – like information they received on December 26, 2000 that warned there were people coming to the Capitol whose “plan is to literally kill people” – many didn’t believe the warnings because they “were biased toward discounting the possibility of such an unprecedented event.”

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As Senator Gary Peters (D-MI), the chairman of the committee, put it, “The failure was largely a failure of imagination, to see threats that the Capitol could be breached as credible, despite the fact that the threats were shared publicly and in such high volume and in a variety of ways. These agencies repeatedly downplayed the threat and failed to sound the alarm.” The report found that the FBI and DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis “failed to fully and accurately assess the severity of the threat identified by that intelligence, and formally disseminate guidance to their law enforcement partners with sufficient urgency and alarm to enable those partners to prepare for the violence that ultimately occurred on January 6th.”

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The report highlighted the many different types of warnings the FBI received, from nongovernmental organizations that track extremist activity online to the public to its own field offices. The warnings included a situational information report from the FBI’s Norfolk office one day before the assault that relayed there was “an online thread that discussed specific calls for violence, stating ‘Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa < a derogatory term for Antifa > slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”

 

There was also a notice from the New Orleans field office that warned of an armed, Quick Reaction Force that had been formed in Northern Virginia.​ This report – which was also sent to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Department of Homeland Security; the U.S. Justice Department; the National Security Agency; and the U.S. State Department – cautioned that these militia members planned to bring “mace, flashlights, body armor, and head protection,” since they were “aware of the prohibition on firearms in Washington, District of Columbia.”

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In December 2024, Inspector General Michael Horowitz of the U.S. Justice Department released report titled A Review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Handling of Its Confidential Human Sources and Intelligence Collection Efforts in the Lead Up to the January 6, 2021 Electoral Certification. His investigation found that, "while the FBI undertook significant efforts to identify domestic terrorism subjects who planned to travel to the Capital region on January 6 and to prepare to support its law enforcement partners on January 6 if needed, the FBI did not take a step that could have helped the FBI and its law enforcement partners with their preparations in advance of January 6.” He continued, “Specifically, the FBI did not canvass its field offices in advance of January 6, 2021, to identify any intelligence, including [informant] reporting, about potential threats to the January 6 Electoral Certification.”

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This ended up being a major issue because, at the time, the FBI had at least four informants providing information on the Proud Boys and their leader, Enrique Tarrio. Although what is referred to in the report as “Field Office 4” had an informant that was “well placed with excellent access,” a critical piece of information the informant provided – that the Proud Boys had been instructed to “face the full force of their defense and attacks which could lead to death...we will be the heavy weight line and shield wall breakers to allow our main forces in” – the field agent in Field Office 4 simply documented the report without circulating it among the other field offices.

 

< Note: Since January 6th, there has been a conspiracy theory championed by Donald Trump and his allies that claims the FBI “secretly placed” 274 agents into the crowd of rioters who stormed the Capitol to intentionally incite chaos.

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The inspector general’s report refutes this, saying they “found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6.” Some FBI informants went to Washington, D.C. that day, but not at the request of the agency. Of the 26 FBI informants that were in Washington that day, “four entered the Capitol during the riot; an additional 13 entered the restricted area around the Capitol, which was a security perimeter established in preparation for the January 6 Electoral Certification; and nine neither entered a restricted area nor entered the Capitol or otherwise engaged in illegal activity.”

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In a shocking move, even Kash Patel – the uber-MAGA loyalist and current director of the FBI who once shamelessly spread this ridiculous FBI conspiracy theory, saying “strange agitators” at the Capitol had “stirred up the crowd to breach the Capitol beforehand,” and that “all the signs of a cover-up are on full display” – eventually publicly rejected it. >

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Now that we are finally paying attention… thank God… we can’t let up on domestic terrorism because the threats persist from the right and are growing from the left.

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As we've repeatedly made clear, violence from the far-right has been the most problematic for quite some time. A 2024 report from the National Institute of Justice – the research, evaluation, and technology agency of the U.S. Department of Justice – summed it up this way: “Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists.” < Just FYI, the Trump/Vance administration removed this report from all federal websites after Charlie Kirk’s murder – surprise, surprise – so it wouldn’t contradict the violence is coming only from the left b.s. narrative. >

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According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, between January 1994 and May 2020, “right-wing terrorists perpetrated the majority – 57 percent – of all attacks and plots during this period, particularly those who were white supremacists, anti-government extremists, and involuntary celibates (or incels). In comparison, left-wing extremists orchestrated 25 percent of the incidents during this period, followed by 15 percent from religious terrorists, 3 percent from ethno-nationalists, and 0.7 percent from terrorists with other motives.”

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A 2021 analysis of the Center’s data by The Washington Post revealed that: “Domestic terrorism incidents have soared to new highs in the United States, driven chiefly by white-supremacist, anti-Muslim and anti-government extremists on the far right. The surge reflects a growing threat from homegrown terrorism not seen in a quarter-century, with right-wing extremist attacks and plots greatly eclipsing those from the far left.”

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That said, the Center’s 2024 Global Terrorism Threat Assessment included the growing threat from the left. It reiterated, once again, that “violent far-right perpetrators, such as white supremacists, anti-government extremists and violent misogynists, have committed the most U.S. terrorist attacks in recent years.” But this time added, “Violent far-left perpetrators such as antifascist extremists, anarchists and violent environmentalists have also orchestrated a growing percentage of terrorist attacks.”

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The threat extends to every aspect of our lives. In the Department of Homeland Security’s 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment, the agency warns: “Over the last year, violent actors with a range of motivations and some domestic violent extremism (DVEs), particularly racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists driven by a belief in the superiority of the white race and accelerationism, have encouraged sabotage or attacks against the energy, communications, and healthcare and public health (HPH) sectors, as well as other critical infrastructure sectors.”

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Plus, a new concern is rapidly developing. A report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in March 2021 said that “[Domestic Violent Extremist] attackers often radicalize independently by consuming violent extremist material online and mobilize without direction from a violent extremist organization, making detection and disruption difficult.” The report underscored that white supremacists have “the most persistent and concerning transnational connections because individuals with similar ideological beliefs exist outside of the United States.” It also revealed that some white supremacists had already “traveled abroad to network with like-minded individuals,” and warned that these groups may get “escalating support from persons in the United States or abroad.”

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Underscoring the point, the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ 2024 Global Terrorism Threat Assessment warns: “The emergence of the United States as an exporter of violent extremism will reshape the terrorist landscape, not only in North America but also farther abroad.”

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Beyond all this, one of the most important reasons we can’t let up is the fact that – as Daryl Johnson warned in 2009 and the FBI’s Counterterrorism Policy Directive and Policy Guide finally confirmed – “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers.”

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In fact, at least 81 active-duty U.S. military and U.S. veterans faced charges because of the U.S. Capitol riot. These included people like former FBI official and Navy intelligence officer Thomas Caldwell, who gave military-style advice and organized training sessions for the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters. Caldwell even started a “death list” of his enemies, saying he would get rid of them by “killing them, shooting them, and mutilating their corpses to use them as shields.”

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… and people like retired Lieutenant Colonel Larry Brock, Jr. an Air Force Academy graduate and combat veteran, who, after the election, told his Facebook audience that the United States was “now under occupation by a hostile governing force.” He went on to say that he saw “no distinction between a group of Americans seizing power and governing with complete disregard to the Constitution and an invading force of Chinese communists accomplishing the same objective.”  He vowed to protect America “against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

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Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found, in an investigation that led to over 50 internal departmental investigations, that “hundreds of active-duty and retired law enforcement officers from across the United States are members of Confederate, anti-Islam, misogynistic or anti-government militia groups on Facebook… Almost 150 of the officers they found are involved with violent anti-government groups such as the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters.”

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As reported jointly by Buzz Feed and Injustice Watch, The Plain View Project – launched by Philadelphia lawyer Emily Baker-White – “examined the accounts of about 2,900 officers from eight departments across the country and an additional 600 retired officers from those same departments. She compiled posts that represented troubling conduct in a database that is replete with racist imagery and memes, and in some cases long, vitriolic exchanges involving multiple officers.”

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“The project sought to compile posts, comments, and other public activity that could undermine public trust in the police and reinforce the views of critics, especially in minority communities, that the police are not there to protect them. Of the pages of officers whom the Plain View researchers could positively identify, about 1 in 5 of the current officers, and 2 in 5 of the retired officers, made public posts or comments that met that threshold – typically by displaying bias, applauding violence, scoffing at due process, or using dehumanizing language. The officers mocked Mexicans, women, and black people, celebrated the Confederate flag, and showed a man wearing a kaffiyeh scarf in the crosshairs of a gun.”

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And, lest we forget, yet another reason we can’t let up is that many of the players from 2020 – like Donald Trump and Sebastian Gorka – are now back in charge, supercharged.

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This, along with all the new guys. In his book, American Crusade, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote that, if a Democrat won the 2024 election, there would be “irreconcilable differences between the Left and the Right in America leading to perpetual conflict that cannot be resolved through the political process.”

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Among the consequences of a Democratic win would be that “America will decline and die. A national divorce will ensue. Outnumbered freedom lovers will fight back… the military and police, both bastions of freedom-loving patriots, will be forced to make a choice. It will not be good. Yes, there will be some form of civil war. It’s a horrific scenario that nobody wants but would be difficult to avoid.” Please, please, please never forget that those words were written by the United States Secretary of Defense.

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