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US' ‘unique moment’: Surge in domestic threats amid Israel-Hamas war
Israel-Hamas War: The FBI has had to run down more than 1,800 reports “of threats or other types of tips or leads”, Lisa Monaco said.
The United States faces a "sobering" and "unique moment" in confronting a domestic threat environment amid the Israel-Hamas war, deputy attorney General Lisa Monaco told ABC News saying that the conflict overseas stoked an already elevated threat situation in the country.
The FBI has had to run down more than 1,800 reports “of threats or other types of tips or leads”, Lisa Monaco said as the bureau now has more than 100 investigations currently opened.
"I think we're in a unique moment where what we're most worried about -- those of us in the national security and law enforcement community -- are individuals or small groups who are often radicalized online and who are motivated by and influenced by a range of ideologies, from foreign terrorism and foreign terrorist organizations to domestic grievances," she said, adding, “Oftentimes what we're seeing in the most lethal form is from racially or ethnically-motivated ideologies.”
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Many cases like threats or tips received by the FBI have been “resolved without incident” but the sheer volume has caused "a lot of strain" law enforcement.
"These are threats, they're hoaxes, they can involve claims of terrorist financing," she said, adding, "So that is the volume -- the significant uptick in the volume and frequency of the types of reports we're getting."
Citing the "searing images" of Hamas' terror attack on Israel as well as accounts of “parents huddled with their children in safe rooms, loved ones being killed in front of each other's children -- literally ripped from their parents and being kidnapped”, she said that this has driven a "very significant uptick in threats" and "actual violence" inside the US.
"We've seen individuals who are taking, I think, twisted inspiration from those images," she said.
