The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is weaponizing its resources to monitor supporters of former President Donald Trump, even creating a “distinct category of domestic violent terrorists” to target MAGA loyalists based on their political views.
After January 6th, the FBI changed its definition of “anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism,” known as AGAAVE from the attempt to further “ideological agendas” to “furtherance of political and/or social agendas,” which allowed Trump supporters to be labeled a potential domestic terrorist threat due to their politics alone.
The FBI then went further by creating AGAAVE-other to target those considered a threat but did not fall within the definition of its anarchist, militia, or Sovereign Citizen groups. The alteration was implemented without a formal announcement in October 2022 and was given the vague definition of “domestic violent extremists who cite anti-government or anti-authority motivations for violence or criminal activity not otherwise defined…”
Although the FBI does not specifically mention MAGA in its definition, government insiders accept the category predominantly targets Trump’s base. “[I]n practical terms, it refers to MAGA, though the carefully constructed language is wholly nonpartisan,” stated an anonymous FBI officer.
The definition is so broad that a senior intelligence officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said they were unsure whether it applied to a few thousand proud boys or 30 percent of the country’s electorate. “I don’t know the answer, and I can assure you the answer isn’t in any secret intelligence that the government possesses,” the officer explains.
The number of FBI domestic violent extremism investigations is skyrocketing as a result, with approximately 2,700 ongoing cases at the end of 2022: double that of spring 2020. The total number of domestic terrorism investigations is now more than 9,000, with the main target being Trump supporters.
The FBI’s clamp down on the MAGA movement is not isolated; the Department of Homeland Security and the White House are similarly working to quash it. Christopher Costa, a former White House head of counterterrorism, claims the government’s overriding aim is to focus the weight of the law on the anti-government terrorist threat from, what he calls, “a small percentage of misguided fellow Americans.”
Another senior intelligence official describes the general contempt in and around Washington for Trump and his supporters going into the 2024 presidential election: “Trump’s army constitutes the greatest threat of violence domestically… politically… that’s the reality and the problem set.”
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