California Democrat Maxine Waters thinks white nationalists and the KKK are trying to kill her.
At least she suggested as much during a House subcommittee hearing on terrorism and illicit financing when she asked what she and others could do about white nationalists and KKK members who threaten them on the Internet.
“What can we do to deal with the KKK, the white nationalists, the extremists, the alt-right?” Waters, who serves as ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services, asked during a Subcommittee on Terrorism and Illicit Finance hearing. ‘They’re on the internet, they’re Breitbart. If you look at the YouTube, you see how much they want to kill me and others. What can we do?’”
“Extremists radicalized by foreign terror groups are not the only terrorists with the capacity to target and kill American citizens,” Waters said. “Indeed, domestic terror attacks have become more frequent in recent years.”
The hearing was intended to discuss “lone-wolf” terrorist threats, with a focus on the financial aspects of terror plots, according to PJ Media.
Seamus Hughes, deputy director for George Washington University’s Program on Extremism and former senior counterterrorism advisor for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told Waters that domestic terrorists are just as big a threat as foreign born terrorists.
“You should be worried about the Orlando shooters, the Omar Mateens of the world as much as you are the James Fields and the Dylann Roofs of the world,” Hughes said.
Waters responded by reeling off a long list of domestic attacks including the Ruby Ridge standoff in 1992, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting in 2009, the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting in 2012, the Los Angeles International Airport shooting in 2013, the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting in 2015, the Portland train attack this year and, of course, Charlottesville.
“Extremists radicalized by foreign terror groups are not the only terrorists with the capacity to target and kill American citizens,” Waters said. “Indeed, domestic terror attacks have become more frequent in recent years.”
Hughes, who testified at the hearing, described the creative ways in which domestic terror groups like an offshoot of the Aryan Nation finance their activities. The group robbed several armored vehicles in the 1980s and successfully laundered more than $4 million to be used in financing and arming white nationalist groups. Hughes explained how Army Private Isaac Aguigui murdered his pregnant wife in 2011, collected about $500,000 in insurance money and then purchased $30,000 worth of guns and ammunition for his militia group Forever Enduring Always Ready, a group that had planned to assassinate President Barack Obama.
Watch the webcast of the hearing below