FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday that officials classified the January 6 deadly attack on the Capitol by former President Trump
Donald Trump Prosecutors Focus Trump Organization Investigation on Company Financial Official: WHO official report says it is “ premature ” to think pandemic will be over by year’s end.adherents as domestic terrorism.
“That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it is behavior that we, the FBI, consider domestic terrorism,” Wray told Senate Judiciary Committee lawmakers.
Wray said the FBI received more than 270,000 tips from Americans who helped the agency identify the many people who reportedly participated in the attack.
“Citizens from all over the country have sent us more than 270,000 digital media tips. Some have even taken the painful step of handing in their friends or their relatives,” he said.
But under questioning of lawmakers, Wray resisted pinning down the Capitol’s breach of a single extremist ideology, saying the group of attackers “came from different backgrounds.”
“The attackers on January 6 added a number and the number continues to grow as we expand our research what we would call militias violent extremism. And we have already arrested some that we would place in the category of racially motivated violent extremism, including white ones. Those would be the categories we see so far through January 6. “
The FBI has arrested at least 280 people allegedly involved in the Capitol attack and charged more than 300.
Wray also said the number of domestic terrorism cases under investigation by the FBI has doubled during his tenure as director of the FBI, from about 1,000 cases in 2017 to 2,000 by the end of 2020.
Updated at 11:06 am