'You're trying to gaslight us': Rep. Goldman erupts at GOP's left-wing violence hearing

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) on Tuesday slammed a former top Department of Homeland Security official for downplaying the domestic terror threat of white supremacists while overstating the threat posed by organized groups on the left.

Goldman took aim at Scott G. Erickson, a former deputy chief of staff at U.S. Department of Homeland Security, during a Committee on Homeland Security's subcommittee meeting on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability hearing titled, “‘Mostly Peaceful’: Countering Left-Wing Organized Violence.”

Erickson during his opening remarks cited left-wing groups such as Antifa as a domestic terror threat.

“So let's look at what our actual executive branch agencies in charge of overseeing white supremacy, overseeing the homeland,” Goldman said.

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“Let's look at the homeland threat assessment, which says, ‘among DVE (domestic violent extremists), racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically white supremacist extremists, will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland’ confirmed by the director of the FBI."

“Now I know all of a sudden you on that side want to defund the FBI, you want to defund the ATF but the director of the FBI, a Trump appointee, has said that the biggest threat to our homeland is not global terrorism. It is domestic terrorism.”

Goldman hit Erickson hard for his comment that during Atlanta protests, 23 people were arrested for crimes such as vandalism and assault, noting that America experiences around 600 mass shootings a year “and we're supposed to be talking here about vandalism.”

“Give me a break.”

“You can't even acknowledge what your own agency said, that the biggest domestic terror threat is white nationalism, white supremacy,” Goldman said, noting another witness, Julio Rosas, the senior writer at the conservative outlet Townhall, asserted before the subcommittee that Antifa poses a significant domestic security threat.

“You're trying to gaslight us up here as if Antifa, which Mr. Rosas, apparently the expert now in organized terrorist activity, has overruled the FBI director who says Antifa is an ideology not an organization."

“No, no, no. Let's not listen to the FBI director. Let's listen to the senior writer at Townhall, who is going to tell us that the FBI director is wrong.”