FBI warns of increased domestic terror threat into 2022

The FBI on Wednesday warned that racially motivated extremists and anti-government extremists are likely to be the biggest domestic threat this year and into 2022.

“Looking forward, we assess the domestic violent extremist threat will continue to pose an elevated threat of violence to the U.S.,” Jill Sanborn, the bureau’s assistant director of the counterterrorism division, told lawmakers during congressional testimony.

“We expect racially or ethnically motivated and violent extremists and anti-government, anti-authority violent extremists will very likely pose the greatest domestic terrorism threats throughout 2021, and in fact leading into 2022,” she added. 

Sanborn’s comments came during the second hearing into the Jan. 6 attack held by the Senate Rules and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees.

Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) criticized the FBI at the start of the hearing for not doing more to warn other law enforcement agencies of the domestic terror risks ahead of Jan. 6.

“While we are aware of the FBI raw intelligence report that came out the day before out of the Norfolk office, public reporting has indicated that neither agency, [the Department of Homeland Security] or FBI, produced a threat report,” ahead of the Capitol attack, she said.