Thread by @rdevro

NEW: an analysis of hundreds of leaked documents reveals that while the president and the attorney general clamored for a crackdown on antifa, law enforcement was sharing detailed reports of threats from far-right extremists to protesters and cops theintercept.com/2020/07/15/geo…

These materials are part of an enormous trove of documents that were recently hacked and posted online.

More on that from @micahflee here. theintercept.com/2020/07/15/blu…

At first glance, you might say that the fact that the most credible threat to human life during the recent protests was coming from the far-right is not surprising — of course that was the case.

That's true but there are other issues here worth noting.

On May 31, Trump tweeted that he would label antifa a terrorist organization.

While that designation has not come for legal and logistical reasons, Barr followed up with an announcement that Joint Terrorism Task Forces would be dispatched nationwide to find antifa “instigators”

That effort is underway. I’ve spoken to protesters across the country who were arrested protesting George Floyd’s killing then interviewed by the FBI.

Barr recently said the government is pursuing more than 500 protest-related investigations focused on “hardcore instigators.”

What these docs show is that before, during and after the period when the administration started hyping the antifa “threat,” which by the way a Trump Super PAC has used to raise reelection cash, law enforcement offices nationwide were sharing intel on threats from the far right.

The administration was publicly silent on those threats at a time when the stakes were incredibly high — groups with a multi-generational history of lethal violence saw this moment as an opportunity — and the danger was real.

On May 29, two days before Trump’s tweet and Barr’s announcement, a sergeant in an elite Air Force unit linked to the so-called boogaloo movement allegedly assassinated a federal court security guard before going on the run, killing a sheriff’s deputy and wounding several others.

Behind the scenes, reports documenting precisely this type of threat were circulating.

Overall, however, the documents show federal law enforcement chasing wild and frequently baseless leads on the administration’s antifa angle.

This is what some might call the politicization of law enforcement.

The administration has hyped “threats” from the out-of-control left for political gain before — during the 2018 mid-terms it was migrant caravans, which followed with devastating terror attacks in El Paso and Pittsburgh.

With the election coming and Barr’s DOJ on the hunt for instigators, the administration isn’t exactly hiding what it’s up to now.

This is what the president said on July 4:

“We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters, and people who in many instances have absolutely no clue what they are doing.”

It’s important to note how this language will be received among a not insignificant portion of the law enforcement community.

As @RethinkIntel said, “This rhetoric, reinforced by the attorney general, is not falling on unsympathetic ears.”

The final thing to keep in mind is what historian
@kathleen_belew said here: that when it comes to legacies of the far-right and anti-fascists in the U.S., the histories are not equivalent.

One has a bodycount. The other does not.