"The FBI is in an almost impossible position," says a current FBI official, who requested anonymity to discuss highly sensitive internal matters.
In a statement to Newsweek, the FBI said: "The threat posed by domestic violent extremists is persistent, evolving, and deadly. The FBI's goal is to detect and stop terrorist attacks, and our focus is on potential criminal violations, violence and threats of violence. Anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism is one category of domestic terrorism, as well as one of the FBI's top threat priorities." The FBI further said, "We are committed to protecting the safety and constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity, including a person's political beliefs or affiliations."
Some of Trump's Republican allies in Congress have called for the FBI to be defunded over such accusations and the prosecution of Trump supporters over the January 6 attack.
The fight over the FBI is in itself helping to stoke the political temperature ahead of the 2024 election.
Drilling further into the individual cases behind the numbers, nearly two-thirds of the FBI's current investigations are focused on Trump supporters and others suspected of violating what the FBI calls "Anti-riot" laws.
All sides use the FBI numbers to further their aims-the FBI and the administration at the front of the line, stressing that it is doing more and that the threat demands more resources and a freer hand.
Michigan Senator Gary Peters, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, consistently argues that the FBI is failing to fight the "Full scope of white supremacist terrorist attacks." Others argue that the FBI is too sympathetic to white supremacists, a view punctuated by an assumption made by many after January 6 that a disproportionate number of protesters and those arrested were veterans or members of law enforcement.
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