Trump's Counterterror Czar Proposes Terror Charges for Political Opponents
Either you love America or you don’t, he says
White House counterterror czar Sebastian Gorka said today that Americans who are not on board with the Trump administration’s immigration policy are “on the side of terrorists."
“It's really quite that simple,” Gorka said in a little-noticed interview with Newsmax. “We have people who love America, like the president, like his cabinet, like the directors of his agencies, who want to protect Americans. And then there is the other side, that is on the side of the cartel members, on the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of the terrorists.”
He didn’t stop there, going on to say this is tantamount to “aiding and abetting” — which he called a crime under federal law.
“And you have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them?” Gorka continued. “Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute.”
Wingnut as his theory may sound, Gorka is not some marginal figure. As Senior Director for Counterterrorism in the White House and Deputy Assistant to President Trump, he’s currently leading the effort to produce a new national strategy for countering domestic terrorism, as I reported last week.
So could Gorka’s intensely partisan worldview be turned into government practice?
Well, the Trump administration has already taken the unprecedented step of formally designating a variety of “transnational criminal organizations,” gangs and drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. With that in place, all the administration would have to do to turn Gorka’s rhetoric into reality would be to claim that critics of Trump’s immigration and deportation policies are providing them with “material support.” Though this felony crime was intended originally to prosecute direct financial and other overt forms of support for al Qaeda, the concept grew to include supposed “crimes” like providing legal counsel. (See Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, which was soundly criticized for being an FBI backdoor to entrap non-criminals.)
All of this is taking place as numerous Democratic members of Congress have expressed support for one such alleged “terrorist” — former Maryland resident Kilmer Abrego Garcia — whom the Trump administration asserts (without proof) was a member of MS-13. Senator Chris Van Holland of Maryland this morning even traveled to El Salvador, where Abrego Garcia was deported, in an attempt to meet with him after expressing opposition to his removal.
Could Van Holland’s mission and protests on behalf of others be spun into charges of providing material support for terrorism?
Gorka seems to think so.
“It's quite telling that we have Democrats on Capitol Hill, not just the lunatics who are torching Tesla dealerships in acts of terrorism themselves, saying, ‘Oh my gosh, the rights of this individual!’” Gorka says of Garcia. “You mean the terrorist who came here illegally?”
From Tesla vandals and now Democratic members of Congress, the Trump administration seems intent on casting a wider and wider net in its new domestic war on terrorism. While the media’s focus is understandably on migrants and deportees, Americans are increasingly coming into the crosshairs. Donald Trump has even mused about giving American citizens the El Salvador treatment.
And despite what you might hear in the mainstream, there are plenty of federal law enforcement people who think like Gorka, including in the FBI and the counterterrorism community. I know because I talk to some of them! They’re just waiting for the green light.
Gorka's worldview, other than his adoration of Donald Trump, is not easy to divine. (I’ve tried.) What’s clear is that his articulation of America First is bizarre, arguing that there is only one America, and that that version of America is the only one worth protecting and preserving.
“The taxonomy of politics in America is dead,” Gorka says. “It's not left and right. It's not even Republican or Democrat. There's one line that divides us: Do you love America or do you hate America?”
It’s a throwback to George Bush’s 9/11 rhetoric that “you’re either with us or against us,” a simplistic formulation that fell by the wayside as his America descended into a quagmire of regime change and nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Gorka’s view seems to be an America First policy in which “America” is whatever he says it is. That’s worse than Bush, but it portends the same outcome: the expansion of a domestic fight that not only pours gasoline on the fire but also expands the battlefield so broadly that the America he claims to loves so much is greatly weakened.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
This is Full Orwell, and even during the early years of the Bush/Cheney administration I would have said 'You never go full Orwell."
But here we are. Now that nihilists and anyone who opposes Trump's broader policy platform are officially designated "terrorists" we have reached the final step. Our country is literally the world's pre-eminent state sponsor of terror, but now when you disagree, you're a terrorist.
Be afraid, very afraid. Where are the fucking opposition electeds? Why is hollins alone in Salvador?