Former FBI agent Erroll Southers told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” that the behavior of a law enforcement agency during Wednesday’s siege on the Capitol on Wednesday brought back memories of Charlottesville and Kenosha.
“It reminds me of 2017 and Charlottesville when one of the individuals who were part of the Unite the Right movement fired a gun and walked past the police,” said Southers, who is currently director of Homegrown Violent Extremism Studies at the United States. University of Southern. California. It provides images of Kenosha after that person killed two people and slung his AR-15 over his shoulder and walked past the police officers who sat him down and fetched him some water. It’s very clear what’s going on here. “
Police response to Wednesday’s siege on the Capitol is increasingly under attack. Critics include President-elect Joe Biden, who called the treatment of rioters a double standard.
“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter who protested yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently from the mob of criminals that stormed the Capitol,” Biden said. “We all know it is true and it is unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.”
Former First Lady Michelle Obama wrote that uprising at the Capitol on Wednesday “made it painfully clear that certain Americans may, in fact, denigrate our nation’s flag and symbol … they just have to look in the right direction.”
The FBI produced a report warning of the infiltration of white nationalists into local law enforcement in 2006. Southers said the Capitol siege illustrates that the situation has since worsened.
“It’s reared its ugly head … and confirmed what we thought 15 years is worse,” Southers said.
A Department of Homeland Security and an FBI review from last year showed that racist terror groups are exhibiting unparalleled activity in the modern era. Southers told host Shepard Smith that the data “clearly stated that the threat is coming from the right.”
The FBI confirmed that it had removed two explosives, including a “pipe bomb-like device,” at RNC headquarters on Wednesday, and Southers explained the message those devices had sent.
“I think back to 1995, do we have to have buildings like Oklahoma City pulled down to get the message?” Southers said. “Thank goodness the building didn’t collapse yesterday.”