Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) took on the FBI on Wednesday during a hearing for not charging white supremacists with domestic terrorism.
Last month, the freshman lawmaker slammed the ongoing double standard of Muslims being charged as terrorists when they commit mass shootings while white supremacists who do the exact same thing are not.
“I could not help but feel and see that attacks committed by Muslim Americans were almost automatically labeled as domestic terrorist incidents,” she said. “Yet white supremacist shooting after shooting after shooting is not and I cannot help but come to the conclusion that these labels, what’s being labeled as terrorism, is almost exclusively coming down to the identity, and it seems as though white men invoking white supremacy and engaging in mass shootings are almost immune from being labeled domestic terrorists in their violence.”
On Wednesday, she got her chance to grill Michael McGarrity, the assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, during a House Oversight Committee hearing.
Once again, Ocasio-Cortez used Dylann Roof as an example because he murdered black parishioners inside a historic black South Carolina church. Roof was not charged as a domestic terrorist, but Muslims are treated way different.
“Doesn’t it seem that because the perpetrator was Muslim that the designation would say it’s a foreign organization?” she asked.
“That is not correct,” McGarrity insisted. “Doesn’t matter what religion.”
“It is a global issue,” he continued after being further prodded by the New York congresswoman.
“So why are they not charged with foreign terror?” she wanted to know.
“Because the United States Congress doesn’t have a statute for us for domestic terrorism like we do for a foreign terrorist organization like we do for ISIS, al Qaeda, and Al-Shabaab,” McGarrity said.
Basically, the FBI is claiming that they do not treat Muslims like terrorists. But after doing some checking, it turns out McGaritty misled the committee, and AOC tweeted all about it.
This hearing was wild.
First the FBI witness tried to say I was wrong. I tried to be generous + give benefit of doubt, but then we checked. I wasn’t.
Violence by Muslims is routinely treated as “terrorism,” White Supremacist violence isn’t.
Neo-Nazis are getting off the hook. https://t.co/RCjp4687by
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 5, 2019
Here’s the video via Twitter.
Rep. @AOC confronted this official about why the FBI doesn’t treat white supremacists the way it treats other terrorists pic.twitter.com/latWQqn11N
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) June 5, 2019
Featured Image: Screenshot
