Yesterday’s hearing was not good for Donald Trump:
Christopher A. Wray, the director of the F.B.I., warned a House committee on Thursday that Russia is actively pursuing a disinformation campaign against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and expressed alarm about violent extremist groups.
“Racially motivated violent extremism,” mostly from white supremacists, has made up a majority of domestic terrorism threats, Mr. Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee. He also echoed an intelligence community assessment last month that Russia is conducting a “very active” campaign to spread disinformation and interfere in the presidential election, with Mr. Biden as the primary target.
“We certainly have seen very active — very active — efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020,” Mr. Wray said, specifically “to both sow divisiveness and discord, and I think the intelligence community has assessed this publicly, to primarily to denigrate Vice President Biden in what the Russians see as a kind of an anti-Russian establishment.”
Mr. Wray’s blunt comments were the latest example of a top national security official contradicting President Trump’s downplaying of Russian election interference. A homeland security official has accused the Trump administration of soft-pedaling both the Russian and white supremacist threats because they would make “the president look bad.”
Democrats pressed him on whether the administration was focusing enough on armed militias and white supremacists, while Republicans expressed similar concerns about Antifa, which Mr. Wray described as an “ideology or movement” rather than an organization
“That seems to me to be downplaying it,” said Representative Daniel Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, citing recent episodes in mass demonstrations where people targeted officers with lasers.
Mr. Wray defended his assessment.
“I by no means mean to minimize the seriousness of the violence and criminality that is going on across the country, some of which is attributable to people inspired by or who self-identify with that ideology or movement,” Mr. Wray said. “We’re focused on that violence, that criminality.”
He said the F.B.I. averaged roughly 1,000 domestic terrorism investigations annually and had recorded about 120 arrests on domestic terrorism suspicions this year. But he made it clear that white supremacist and anti-government groups were the primary threats.
In particular, neo-Nazi groups such as Atomwaffen Division and the Base have drawn the attention of the F.B.I., which has arrested violent members of those organizations. White supremacists have carried out the most lethal attacks on American soil in recent years.
Somebody did NOT like any of that:
Your president, ladies and gentlemen. A screeching, conspiracy nut.