House Foreign Affairs Ranking Member Meeks, Keating Lead Dems in Letter to Rubio on Politicization of Counter Terrorism

Washington, D.C, - Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Bill Keating, Ranking Member of the Europe Subcommittee, led Democrats today in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio raising concerns that the State Department is politicizing counterterrorism work at the expense of American national security.

The letter comes as the Department hosts a so-called international conference focused exclusively on left-wing political extremism even as it guts the vital offices and programs that once combated violence and extremism of all forms through apolitical data-driven expertise.

A PDF copy of the letter can be found here.

"While the strategy notes that 'counterterrorism operations will be executed apolitically and founded upon reality-based threat assessments,' the absence of basic data or evidence within the strategy to justify the ranked order is deeply concerning, especially in light of previous Democratic and Republican administrations, including the first Trump administration, highlighting the domestic terrorism threat posed by a range of groups; including the threat of racially-motivated violent extremism. For example, in a 2019 Congressional testimony, former FBI Director Christopher Wray testified in response to a question about the Bureau's response to a prevalence of violent extremist murders being committed by White supremacists or other far-right groups saying violent extremism, including racially-motivated violent extremism, posed a significant threat to the United States and was thus elevated to a national threat priority on par with ISIS...

"In an official statement to the Times, the State Department said it was working with international partners to counter "antifa-aligned terrorism." The same Times investigation reported that the State Department was planning a summit later this month focused on addressing far-left extremism. In a June 5 briefing to Congress, senior State Department officials stated that while a summit was being planned for this summer, its focus and scope had not yet been finalized.

"The Department's reported focus on far-left extremism at the expense of other kinds of violent extremism is troubling on several grounds: First, the State Department does not have a domestic mandate that would encompass "Antifa" in the United States. The Department has failed to clarify whether taxpayer dollars will be used illegally to target U.S. citizens in the United States or abroad as it purportedly counters far-left extremism. Second, the State Department has made no indication that it is taking an apolitical and comprehensive approach to countering violent extremism."

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