'Pretty damn dangerous': DOJ crackdown on left-leaning groups unnerves experts

The Trump administration is opening up a new crackdown on left-wing groups that experts warn could place broad categories of political speech under surveillance.

Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo this month directing federal law enforcement agencies to send their intelligence files on “Antifa” and “Antifa-related” activities to the FBI, which she tasked with drawing up lists of Americans and foreign nationals to investigate as potential terrorist threats, reported the Washington Post.

“Left-wing organizations have fueled violent riots, organized attacks against law enforcement officers, coordinated illegal doxing campaigns, arranged drop points for weapons and riot materials, and more,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson. “The Trump Administration will get to the bottom of this vast network inciting violence in American communities.”

Bondi’s Dec. 4 memorandum, which was first reported by journalist Ken Klippenstein and later confirmed to the Post by the Justice Department, lists as potential targets individuals who express views considered as “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” “opposition to law and immigration enforcement,” “radical gender ideology,” and “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality."

The memo does not mention violent extremism rooted right-wing ideology or other viewpoints.

“It’s a pretty damn dangerous document,” said former FBI agent Michael Feinberg, who is now a senior editor at Lawfare. “It’s dangerous in the sense that it is directed at a specific ideology, namely the left, without offering much evidence as to why that is necessary, and it’s also dangerous in the sense that it’s ignoring the lion’s share of nihilistic violent extremists.”

A former FBI counterterror expert and a person currently involved with government oversight of the intelligence agencies told the Post on condition of anonymity the memo appeared to be an effort to justify using against Americans powerful surveillance tools now used against foreign terrorists.

“They are trying to find ways to say: ‘This American who is involved in American politics, do they have a foreign financial connection?’ And that’s enough to say they are a foreign operative, so especially if they leave the country, there’s much less oversight,” the former FBI counterterror expert said.