After one of its top staffers was arrested for involvement in a domestic terrorist attack, Rep, Matt Gaetz wants the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) put under the investigative microscope.
Specifically, Gaetz, a Fort Walton Beach Republican who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, wants GOP lawmakers to probe the FBI’s reliance on the SPLC in determining who is or isn’t a domestic terrorist, Fox News reported recently.
As The Free Press reported last month, a trio of Florida Republicans — Sen. Rick Scott and Reps. Greg Steube and Bill Posey, of Sarasota and Rockledge, respectively — demanded answers from FBI Director Christopher Wray after an FBI analyst in Richmond issued an anti-Catholic report.
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The document described “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” as potential terrorists who adhere to “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and white supremacist ideology.” The source for that analysis was the SPLC.
House Republicans now want a closer look at the connection between the FBI and the SPLC in light of that memo and the arrest on domestic terrorism charges of Thomas Webb Jurgens, a staff attorney for the SPLC.
Atlanta police arrested Jurgens among 23 suspected domestic terrorists who attacked a police training facility last week by hurling bricks and Molotov cocktails at officers and setting fire to construction vehicles.
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Asked about the possible probe of the FBI-SPLC connection, Gaetz told Fox News, “The SPLC has essentially converted to SPL-Qaeda. They gaslight violence against conservatives while masquerading as an authority on civil rights.”
“Why does the FBI rely on a group who now has definitive ties to staff coordinating and participating in activities that local law enforcement categorizes as domestic terrorism? This is yet again another area of investigation that House Republicans must look into when conducting oversight of these weaponized agencies,” Gaetz added.
Fox News noted that the FBI declined to comment on its relationship to the left-wing, anti-GOP SPLC, but did admit that the anti-Catholic report from Richmond “[did] not meet the exacting standards of the FBI.”
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