FBI Director Says ‘Majority of Domestic Terrorism’ is White Supremacist-Related

FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the majority of domestic terrorism his agency investigates is motivated by “some version of what you might call white supremacist violence” — a revelation that supports comments for which CNN anchor Don Lemon received significant blowback not long ago.

At Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on FBI oversight, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) asked Wray to “quantify” the threat of domestic terrorism.

“In terms of number of arrests, we have, through the third quarter of this fiscal year, had about, give or take, a hundred arrests in the international terrorism side, which includes the homegrown violent extremism,” Wray said.

“This year,” Durbin said.

“This year,” Wray confirmed, and added “But we’ve also had just about the same number, again don’t quote me the exact digit, on the domestic terrorism side, and I will say that a majority of the domestic terrorism cases that we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of white, what you might call white supremacist violence, but it includes other things as well.”

Wray’s testimony tracks closely with comments that Lemon made in November, when he said that “the biggest terror threat in this country is white men,” and added “There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban on — you know, they had the Muslim ban. There is no ‘white guy ban.’ So what do we do about that?”

Those remarks sparked outrage on social media, which prompted Lemon to respond that those critics were “missing the entire point.”

“We don’t need to worry about people who are thousands of miles away,” Lemon explained. “The biggest threats are homegrown. The facts prove that.”

Watch the clip above, via C-SPAN.