OPINION — “Domestic and homegrown violent extremists are often motivated and inspired by a mix of social or political, ideological, and personal grievances against their targets, and more recently have focused on accessible targets to include civilians, law enforcement and the military, symbols or members of the U.S. government, houses of worship, retail locations, and public mass gatherings…The number of FBI domestic terrorism investigations has more than doubled since the spring of 2020. At the end of FY 2023, the FBI was conducting approximately 2,700 investigations within the domestic terrorism program.”
That was FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, testifying last Tuesday before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Bureau’s fiscal 2025 budget request.
During more than wo hours of testimony, Wray touched on many of the issues that both concern and seem to depress the American public – terrorism and violence, drugs and crime, guns and gangs, cyberattacks and ransomware, and election interference.
However, an hour and twenty minutes into Wray’s testimony, the focus of the hearing shifted briefly when Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) said to Wray, “Several federal laws prohibit using governmental authority to interfere in federal elections, and the FBI would be in charge of investigating such a federal law were that to occur. Is that correct?”
Wray said an investigation would depend “on the facts, the specific factual scenario.” Hagerty then described his version of former President Trump’s current legal situations and claimed, “It certainly appears there’s a coordinated effort to go after the President’s [Biden’s] main political rival [Trump], all these convening right at the same time, right in the middle of the election year.”
Hagerty went on, “We have a situation where the incumbent President’s major opponent is being prosecuted in five separate jurisdictions, all by Democrat partisan prosecutors and all culminating in the middle of an election season. Does that not sound to you like coordinated election interference or is that just a coincidence?…It certainly looks like the type of thing the FBI should be investigating.”
Wray said he would not discuss state or other prosecutions or potential FBI investigations. But Hagerty’s allegation of a possible Democratic Party election conspiracy needing an FBI investigation got me thinking about what plans for the FBI are contained in Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, the Heritage Foundation-sponsored collection of essays on what a second Trump administration might look like should he win.
I will pick that up below. Meanwhile, Wray’s testimony did provide some interesting insights on current issues.
Threats from afar, threats from the home front
For example, looking at the threat of domestic terrorism, Wray said, “Lone actors present a particular challenge to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. These actors are difficult to identify, investigate, and disrupt before they take violent action, especially because of the insular nature of their radicalization and mobilization to violence and limited discussions with others regarding their plans.”
Wray said while the FBI was conducting approximately 4,000 investigations within its international terrorism program, he also said that the most immediate threats from foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) come from “people located and radicalized to violence primarily in the United States, who are not receiving individualized direction from FTOs but are inspired to commit violence by FTOs.”
However, reviewing the FBI’s own website, I saw that last week, under “Terrorism News,” the Bureau reported cases of seven persons, not FTOs but all of whom had been involved in the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol – four arrested for their participation; two who pled guilty to felony charges and one who was sentenced to 74 months for attacking police with bear spray and a metal whip.
The Bureau website also reported these eye-catching numbers: “In the 40 months since Jan.6, 2021, more than 1,424 individuals have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including more than 500 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, a felony. The investigation remains ongoing.”
Drugs, guns and cyberattacks
Drugs have become an important focus of FBI activity – in sharp contrast, I will add, to the FBI’s early years when its legendary Director, J. Edgar Hoover, refused to tackle the subject for fear his agents would be too easily corrupted by smugglers and drug dealers.
Last week, Wray said, “As part of our efforts to combat the transnational organized threat, the FBI is focused on the [Mexican] cartels trafficking dangerous narcotics, like fentanyl, across our borders. The FBI has over 350 cases linked to cartel leadership, and 91 of those are along the southern border.”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) asked Wray, “We’re not getting much cooperation out of Mexico, are we?” Wray answered, “Let me put it this way, while we have had some successes here and there in terms of extraditions and so forth, and I appreciate those. And I’m grateful to our Mexican partners, particularly at the working level…{But] we need a whole lot more from Mexico than we’ve gotten in terms of shutting down the cartels and stopping the flow of the precursors [of fentanyl], and I could go on and on.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) brought up “the shocking increase in illegal marijuana growing operations in rural homes in Maine that are often run by Chinese nationals. She asked Wray, “What is the FBI’s theory about why Chinese nationals or Chinese transnational criminal organizations are setting up these illegal marijuana growing operations in states like Maine?”
Wray replied, “We don’t yet see, but we’re obviously investigating, any direct ties between these growers and, say, the Chinese government itself. But we are starting to see, as we unpack this more, more ties between these growing operations and Chinese organized crime.”
He added they may be doing it in rural areas of the U.S. “because the consequences they face from a legal perspective are not as severe.”
Wray also reported on the vast increase that has taken place in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, which, he said, “is to ensure that guns do not fall into the wrong hands and ensure the timely transfer of firearms to eligible gun buyers.”
In NICS first month of operation, in December 1998, 892,840 firearm background checks were processed, Wray said. In 2023, the average month saw approximately 2.4 million checks processed, leading to 29.9 million processed for the whole year. A 2022 law requires enhanced checks for a gun purchaser under the age of 21, and Wray said, “The FBI expects the volume of NICS transactions to continue to grow.” He added later, “One of the two recurrent themes you’ll hear on violent crime is the role of juveniles and the role of mental health.”
When it come to cyber issues affecting Americans, Wray said.”Ransomware is one of our top priorities.” In his prepared statement, Wray said, “Cybercriminals target hospitals, medical centers, educational institutions, and other critical infrastructure for theft or ransomware, causing massive disruption to our daily lives. Incidents affecting medical centers have led to the interruption of computer networks and systems that put patients’ lives at increased risk.”
Wray described the Bureau as “heavily engaged in private sector outreach specifically to try to build resilience and harden the private sector infrastructure from ransomware attacks.” He added that it was “incredibly important” for “victims to reach out to us as quickly as possible when they’re hit.”
While the FBI discourages victims from paying ransom, he said, “There have been times when businesses contacted us quickly where we’re able to help them…cases where we’ve been able to obtain decryption keys so they can get their systems unlocked, protect their information, and not pay the ransom. But that can’t happen if they don’t contact us.” He added, “There are times when we can chase the money, working with the victim, and claw back the ransom before it gets to the bad guys.”
A Trump 2.0 blueprint
As I mentioned above, the FBI foreseen in what the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership 2025 sees for the “next conservative Administration,” would be far different from the institution Wray described last week. I thought while reviewing the Bureau’s current agenda, seeing its possible different future was worth some consideration.
Written by Gene Hamilton, Counselor to the Attorney General in the Trump administration and currently Vice President and General Counsel of the Trump-oriented America First Legal Foundation, the FBI is described as “a bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization, especially at the top,” which “views itself as an independent agency that is ‘on par with the Attorney General,’ rather than as an agency that is under the AG and fully accountable to him or her.”
Hamilton’s proposals aim to move more control over the FBI to the President and his political appointees.
For example, the Mandate calls for a legislative proposal to Congress to eliminate the 10-year term for the FBI Director, a reform from the Watergate period that was aimed at making the position apolitical. Hamilton says directly, “The Director of the FBI must remain politically accountable to the President in the same manner as the head of any other federal department or agency.”
To change the Bureau’s situation, Hamilton proposes, “The next conservative Administration should direct the Attorney General to remove the FBI from the Deputy Attorney General’s direct supervision within the department’s organizational chart and instead place it under the general supervision of the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division and the supervision of the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, as applicable.”
This would, Hamilton writes, “place the FBI under a politically accountable leader with fewer things to manage than the Deputy Attorney General or the Attorney General have.” He also calls for eliminating the FBI’s separate Office of General Counsel, Office of Legislative Affairs, and Office of Public Affairs.
Let me add, Mandate for Leadership 2025 also makes suggestions in other fields of government, including intelligence. Although the latter gets less open political direction, the implication is there, as written by Dustin Carmack, who for six months served as chief of staff for Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe at the end of the Trump administration,
For example, in discussing the CIA, the document says, “As with every agency in government, the President’s election sets a new agenda for the country. Public servants must be mindful that they are required to help the President implement that agenda while remaining apolitical, upholding the Constitution and laws of the United States, and earning the public trust.”
In another section, Carmack writes, “The CIA’s bureaucracy continues to grow. Because mid-level managers lack accountability, there are areas in which personnel are not responsive to any authority, including the President. The President should instruct the Director to hire or promote new individuals to lead the various directorates and mission centers. This new crop of mid-level leaders should carry out clear directives from senior CIA leadership, which means more accountability and new ways of thinking to benefit the mission.”
These are more than just hints of changes should there be a second Trump administration.
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