The Trump administration is using a Biden-era policy to investigate protesters as potential terrorists, and intelligence sources are alarmed by the new strategy.
The effort is being led by White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka, who has recently claimed president Donald Trump has “done a 180 on our counterterrorism policy," which has resulted in strikes on “high value targets” in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia, and intelligence sources told independent journalist Ken Klippenstein that some of those strategies will be deployed on the domestic front.
"The domestic focus derives from the view that foreign control, antisemitism and a conspiracy against Donald Trump are behind everything from Gaza protests to Planned Parenthood," Klippenstein wrote. "White House insiders firmly believe that protestors are being 'paid' to disrupt the Trump agenda, the same sources say."
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Gorka and his team share the belief that illegal immigrants, drug runners, sex traffickers, and money launderers were allowed to operate with impunity during Joe Biden's presidency, and intelligence sources say they're using a sweeping National Counterterrorism Strategy developed 2021, in response to the Jan. 6 riot, to root out potential terrorists.
"Counterterrorism is a fancy way for the government to refer to the business of pre-crime," Klippenstein wrote. "Designed to prevent attacks before they happen, counterterrorism doesn’t need a crime on which to predicate its activities."
Instead of investigating a crime after it has occurred, counterterrorism personnel are looking for characteristics that might predict that someone might carry out an act of extremist violence, and Klippenstein said the criteria are alarmingly broad.
"Ever had a heated argument expressing sympathy for Luigi Mangione or HAMAS?" he wrote. "Or bought military-style tactical equipment? Or withdrawn from family? If so, you meet the government’s criteria listed in its 2021 'Mobilization Indicators' booklet, a document intended to help local and state police to spot a terrorist."
Gorka and his team are using the strategy developed under Biden to target Trump's political opponents and portraying petty crimes occurring at protests as terrorism, and intelligence sources say the officials crafting those plans are using tactics they learned while fighting wars overseas.
“'The danger,' one senior intelligence official told us, is that the team preparing the strategy are all warfighters, seeing America as no different than the Middle East," Klippenstein.
Those sources say the administration considers Tesla vandalism and anti-Trump violence to be terrorism, and the White House is already arresting and attempting to deport foreign-born students who took part in protests disfavored the administration, and they told Klippenstein how those wartime strategies might be deployed against domestic targets.
“Characterize the enemy, disrupt the internal workings of conspiratorial actors, eliminate the leadership, all of the strategies against al Qaeda and ISIS are being brought home in thinking about a new domestic strategy,” a senior intelligence official said.
“These are warfighters, and proud of it,” the official added. “They are exactly the wrong team to revise our national strategy for what happens inside the United States.”