As the 2024 presidential election looms, the FBI has decided to classify supporters of former President Donald Trump as potential “domestic extremists,” a Newsweek investigation has found.
Newsweek exclusively reported October 4 that the FBI’s targeting of Trump supporters “drastically increased under President Joe Biden,” and that “nearly two-thirds of the FBI’s current investigations” target Trump supporters who are suspected of violating what the bureau calls “anti-riot” laws.
One unnamed FBI official told Newsweek that the primary rationale for the nation’s top law enforcement agency to target supporters of the leading Republican candidate for president was to prevent a “repeat of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.”
This was an allusion, of course, to the riot that breached the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers met in early 2021 to certify Biden’s Electoral College victory over Trump.
Newsweek published national security reporter William M. Arkin’s 4,300-word report amid growing concerns and criticism from conservatives and independents about the scope of the FBI’s actions and its apparent partisanship over the past few years.
“The FBI needs a thorough reform,&rdqu ...
