FBI Special Agent Erroll Southers told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” that the behavior of some law enforcement during Wednesday’s siege of the U.S. Capitol evoked memories of Charlottesville and Kenosha.
“It evokes for me memories of 2017 and Charlottesville when one of the people who were part of the Unite the Right movement threw a gun and went past the police,” said Southers, who is currently the director of Studies of Violent Extremism at the University of the South. California. “Images of Kenosha are recovered after that individual killed two people, threw the AR-15 over his shoulder and ran over the police officers who sat him down and got him some water. It’s very clear what’s going on here. “
Police response to Wednesday’s siege at the U.S. Capitol is being increasingly burned. Among the critics is President-elect Joe Biden, who described the treatment of riot police as a double standard.
“No one can tell me that if it had been a Protestant Black Lives Matter group yesterday, they would not have been treated very differently to the crowd of thugs who stormed the Capitol,” Biden said. “We all know this to be true and unacceptable. Totally unacceptable.”
Former First Lady Michelle Obama he wrote that Wednesday Capitol riot “made it painfully clear that certain Americans are allowed to denigrate the flag and symbol of our nation … they just have to look the right way.”
The FBI drew up a report warning of the infiltration of white nationalists into local law enforcement in 2006. Southerners said the siege of the U.S. Capitol illustrates the situation has since worsened.
“He’s raised the ugly head back … and confirmed what we thought 15 years was even worse,” Southers said.
A national security department and an FBI assessment last year showed that racist terrorist groups show unprecedented activity in the modern era. Southers told host Shepard Smith that the data “clearly articulated that the threat came from the right.”
The FBI confirmed it had two explosive devices, including a “bomb-type device,” at RNC headquarters Wednesday, and Southers explained the message these devices sent.
“I think in 1995, we have to take down the buildings like they did in Oklahoma City for us to get the message across?” Southers said. “Yesterday, thank God, the building didn’t fall.”