The Department of Homeland Security is concerned by the theory Donald Trump will be reinstated as president in August and is monitoring extremist online communities for threats of violence, the agency’s top counterrorism official said Thursday.
Assistant secretary for counterterrorism John Cohen told the House Committee on Homeland Security that he was worried the heightened claims of election rigging and beliefs Trump will be back in office would lead to violence, Politico reported.
He was responding to reports from the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and the National Review earlier this month that Trump is telling aides he could be back in office by August.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has also been spreading the theory publicly and claims he is the source of the claims.
The Department of Homeland Security is concerned by the theory Donald Trump will be reinstated as president in August and is monitoring extremist online communities for threats of violence, the agency’s top counterrorism official said Thursday. Assistant secretary for counterterrorism John Cohen (right) told the House Committee on Homeland Security that he was worried the claims of election rigging would lead to a violent response
A Morning Consult/POLITICO poll from earlier this month showed 29 percent of Republican voters believe Trump would be returned to the Oval Office at some point this year.
Michigan Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin asked Cohen how his department was handling the spread of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and the way they can spark violence, according to Politico.
Cohen insisted that he was not aware of any specific threats based on the Trump theory, but his staff were still watching online activity.
The briefing on domestic terrorism also covered the surge in violent crime in 2020 and 2021, following President Biden’s announcement of a crackdown on gun dealers on Wednesday.
He was responding to reports from the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and the National Review earlier this month that Trump is telling aides he could be back in office by August
Conservative commentator Charlie Sykes wrote for MSNBC that the conspiracy theory that Trump will be reinstated in August is based on ‘guesswork’.
Sykes wrote that their is also a belief that an election audit in Arizona will uncover election fraud and there are ‘delusional’ hopes the Supreme Court will invalidate Biden’s win.
Trump has railed against false claims of election fraud since his loss in November.
Earlier this week he slammed a Republican-run investigation that found no irregularities in Michigan.
He also celebrated Georgia taking 10,000 names of the state’s electoral register, but questioned why it had taken them so long.
The Biden administration has also made the crackdown on domestic terrorism a priority in the aftermath of the Capitol riot.
On Thursday Nancy Pelosi announced a Democrat-led select committee would investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol, after Senate Republicans blocked the bid to set up a 9/11-style commission last month.
The Biden administration has also made the crackdown on domestic terrorism a priority in the aftermath of the Capitol riot. On Thursday Nancy Pelosi announced a Democrat-led select committee would investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol, after Senate Republicans blocked the bid to set up a 9/11-style commission last month
‘Crack their skulls!’: Trump told military to shoot and ‘beat the f**k’ out of BLM protesters last summer – but Joint Chiefs Chair Milley refused, new book reveals
The top US general rejected then-President Donald Trump’s push for the military to ‘crack skulls’ at civil rights protests across the nation in 2020.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley seemed to be at odds and – at times – the lone dissenting voice against the former president wanting to respond with force to protests over the murder of George Floyd, a black man who died while in police custody in Minneapolis.
Passionate exchanges between Milley and Trump were included in Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender’s new book ‘Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,’ of which CNN obtained excerpts.
It comes as Milley yesterday said recruits should be ‘open-minded and be widely read’ amid growing claims that the US military is becoming more ‘woke’.
The military officer spoke out against growing criticism over teaching critical race theory in the military as he was grilled by Republican Congressmen.
While watching protests unfold in places like Seattle and Portland, Trump highlighted cops’ physical exchanges with protestors and told his administration that’s what he wanted to see, CNN reported.
‘That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people,’ Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials, Bender wrote, according to CNN. ‘Crack their skulls!’
Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, at the June 17 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, was reportedly at odds with Donald Trump when Trump was president
Trump also told his team that he wanted the military to go in and ‘beat the f–k out’ of civil rights protestors, Bender wrote, according to CNN.
CNN reported other examples of Trump telling the military to shoot protestors. At one point, a Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller compared the protests to third-world countries, which angered Milley, Bender wrote.
Milley, who commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, said, ‘Shut the f–k up, Stephen,’ CNN reported from one of the excerpts.
Bender’s book showed Milley was concerned that Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to deploy the military in cases of rebellion or terrorist attack.