FBI Director Christopher Wray recently issued a statement saying for the fiscal of 2020, racially-motivated violent extremists in the United States are a “national threat priority.” Wray noted the FBI is putting the risk of violence that comes from those types of groups in the same space as threats from organizations like ISIS.
The statement from the FBI said, “The most persistent threats to the nation and U.S. interests abroad are homegrown violent extremists (HVEs), domestic violent extremists, and foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). The international terrorism threat to the U.S. has expanded from sophisticated, externally directed FTO plots to include individual attacks carried out by HVEs who are inspired by designated terrorist organizations."
Wray then spoke on how hate crimes in the U.S. have increased in the last year, and have occurred the most since 2001. He said “They choose easily accessible weapons — a car, a knife, a gun, maybe an IED they can build crudely off the internet — and they choose soft targets. That threat is what we assess is the biggest threat to the homeland right now."
source: CBS News
