Wray: Racially motivated violent extremism makes up most of FBI’s domestic terrorism cases

FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers Thursday that racially motivated violent extremism cases account for the bulk of the bureau’s work on domestic terrorist threats.

Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee, Wray also said most of the racially motivated cases deal with white supremacists.

“Within the domestic terrorism bucket, the category as a whole, racially motivated violent extremism is, I think, the biggest bucket within that larger group. And within the racially motivated violent extremist bucket, people subscribing to some kind of white supremacist-type ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that,” he said.

“Lately we’ve been having about 1,000 domestic terrorism cases each year. It is higher this year,” Wray added. “I know we’ve had about 120 arrests for domestic terrorism this year.”

His remarks came after questioning from Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a first-year lawmaker who previously served as a CIA analyst.

Wray went on to say that racially motivated violent extremists, violent anarchist extremists, militia types, sovereign citizens, “you name it,” all fall into the bucket of domestic terrorism cases.

While Wray said he did not know off the top of his head the exact number of cases the FBI has opened into white supremacists, he said racially motivated violent extremists in recent years have been responsible for the most lethal activity.

“Of the domestic terrorism threats, we last year elevated racially motivated extremism to be a national threat priority commensurate with homegrown violent extremists,” he added.