Biden, in a rare prime-time speech, condemns Donald Trump and his “MAGA Republicans” as he urged the nation to unite against threats to American democracy on September 1, 2022. (Credit: public domain)
The Biden administration authorized federal law enforcement four years ago to target Americans engaged in “concerning non-criminal behavior” in the name of fighting domestic terrorism, with a specific eye on those serving in the military, owning firearms, or spreading what officials considered to be “xenophobic” disinformation, according to newly declassified documents.
The stunning breadth of the mandate was disclosed when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently released a fully unredacted version of the prior administration’s “Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism.”
The June 2021 memo exposed for the first time the law enforcement and intelligence framework that led the FBI to monitor and probe conservative Catholics and parents who protested against some school board policies and justified Homeland Security to engage in censorship or debanking of Americans the administration considered to be potential enemies of the state.
The directives provided to the Justice Department and FBI by the National Security Council, which developed the memo, said the agencies should “drive…executive and legislative action” to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, rein in “ghost guns,” monitor active-duty service members for possible terrorism recruitment and “mitigate xenophobia and bias.”
You can read the full memo here.