Durbin renews attack on domestic terrorism
Senator ties issue to Holocaust Remembrance Day as feds issue warning bulletin
A man later identified and arrested as Robert Keith Packer of Virginia wears a “Camp Auschwitz” hoodie outside the Capitol during the attack on Congress Jan. 6. (Facebook)
By Ted Cox
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin used Holocaust Remembrance Day to renew his call for a bill to fight domestic terrorism.
Speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday, 76 years after the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz death camp in Poland toward the end of World War II, Durbin drew strong parallels between Nazism and U.S. domestic terrorism.
“Three weeks ago today,” he said, “an angry mob attacked this Capitol building and this Congress,” as it met in a joint session to certify the results of the November election. “That siege on the Capitol was an attack on American democracy itself. Sadly, it was incited by then-President Donald Trump.”
Durbin drew special attention to a man later identified and arrested as Robert Keith Packer of Virginia, who wore a hoodie reading, “Camp Auschwitz,” with the slogan, “Work brings freedom,” a translation of the Nazi inscription above the Auschwitz entry gates, in the attack. The senator then told one of his trademark stories about George Brent, a 91-year-old constituent who survived Auschwitz, who was “outraged” by what he saw on television that day, especially the specific reference to the death camp.
Durbin said it was “long overdue” for “Congress to pass legislation aimed at addressing the significant threat of domestic terrorism — domestic, homegrown, American terrorism,” adding, “For far too long we have failed to adequately monitor the dangerous groups that threaten us, the violent White supremacists and other extremist groups. While we looked the other way, the threat grew.”
The same day, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin “due to a heightened threat environment across the United States, which DHS believes will persist in the weeks following the successful presidential Inauguration. Information suggests that some ideologically motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.” The bulletin said the warning was in effect through the end of April.
Calling it “a serious and growing threat to America’s security,” Durbin said, “The Trump administration spent four years downplaying it, and the former president made appalling, incendiary, embarrassing statements that only served to further incite those violent extremists. We cannot wait another moment.” Without mentioning the Homeland Security bulletin, he added, “I trust that President Biden will take a different approach. This is a serious threat to security in America.”
Durbin said he’d be reintroducing his bill for the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, which he first introduced in 2017 and reintroduced almost two years ago in the last Congress along with U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider of Deerfield. If passed into law, it would call on the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Justice Department to issue joint annual reports to House and Senate committees that “assess the domestic terrorism threat posed by white supremacists; analyze domestic terrorism incidents that occurred in the previous year; and provide transparency through a public quantitative analysis of domestic-terrorism-related assessments, investigations, incidents, arrests, indictments, prosecutions, convictions, and weapons recoveries.”
Durbin pledged to hold hearings on the bill after he assumes the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he appeared to address his Senate colleagues on the upcoming second Trump impeachment trial, set to take place next month, on charges of “incitement of insurrection,” amid Republican calls to “get over it” now that Trump has left office.
“We cannot ignore it,” Durbin said. “It’s not a question of getting over it. It’s not a question of letting President Trump ride off into the sunset. We’ve got to come to grips with the reality of what occurred three weeks ago.”
Schneider echoed Durbin in saying he’d be reintroducing their bill in the House. “We need to take the risks very seriously,” Schneider added. “Jan. 6 gave evidence to the entire nation the risk we face in domestic terrorism. … It requires a whole government approach.”