The Patriot Post® · The Real Terrorist Threat Is From the Left

There was a moment during Merrick Garland’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings when we knew that, if confirmed as attorney general, he’d have no interest in pursuing equal justice under the law — especially when it came to domestic terrorist threats from the Left.

That moment came after he’d called the January 6 Capitol riot “the most heinous attack on the democratic processes that I’ve ever seen,” and after he’d deemed the Justice Department’s investigation into the riot to be “extremely aggressive and perfectly appropriate.”

Shortly afterward, Missouri Republican Josh Hawley tried to get a fuller picture of Garland’s views on domestic extremism. “Let me ask you about assaults on federal property in places other than Washington, DC,” Hawley began, “Portland, for instance. Seattle. Do you regard assaults on federal courthouses or other federal property as acts of domestic extremism, domestic terrorism?”

This was Garland’s response, give or take an occasional uh or um: “An attack on a, uh, uh, uh, courthouse while in operation — uh, trying to prevent judges from actually deciding cases — that plainly is, um, domestic uh, uh, um, um extremism uh, uh, um, um, uh, um, domestic terrorism. Um, an attack simply on government property at night, or under any other kind of circumstances, is a clear crime and a serious one, and should be punished. … One is, one is, both are, uh, criminal, um, uh, but one is, uh, a core attack on our democratic institutions.”

We wonder, then, what AG Garland would make of a two-minute video just released by Portland-based antifa thugs. Toward the end, there’s a chilling threat directed toward Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler. As the video’s narrator puts it: “Ted, we are asking for the last time that you resign. If you ignore this message outright, the destruction to your precious way of life is going to escalate. Blood is already on your hands, Ted. And next time it may just be your own.” See for yourself:

Disturbing death threat video being shared online by #antifa that caught the attention of the FBI. There is now an active @PortlandPolice investigation. @MrAndyNgo has censored the part that includes a home address of Mayor @tedwheeler. pic.twitter.com/CsneYyQ4KJ

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 30, 2021

Our question to the attorney general: Wouldn’t this threat of bodily harm to a specific government official constitute “a core attack on our democratic institutions” of the sort you identified during your Senate hearings? And if this isn’t domestic terrorism, then what is?

The FBI’s actions and inactions haven’t given us any reason for confidence of late, but it appears that the bureau at least has taken notice. As the intrepid Andy Ngo tweeted, “The FBI has gotten involved after an antifa group in Portland released a disturbing video that ended w/a threat to kill Ted Wheeler (his address was shown).”

As we noted last week, Wheeler, since his election in 2017, has been a hard-left, antifa-appeasing milquetoast of a mayor. Finally, though, he appears to have had enough. “They want to burn. They want to bash. … Really they want to intimidate. They want to assault,” he said of antifa last week. “Our job is to unmask them, arrest them, and prosecute them.”

Welcome to the party, Ted. Better late than never.

Will justice ever be served to these leftist terrorists? Who knows. But Joe Biden’s claim during last week’s address to Congress and the nation that “the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today is from white supremacist terrorism” is a BIG Lie.

As Power Line’s John Hinderaker put it, “Let me know when white supremacists burn down a city or two; until then, I am going with Antifa.”