Domestic Terrorism

Professor William C. Banks Helps CNN Explain Steve Bannon 1/6 Subpoena

College of Law Professor Emeritus William C. Banks was interviewed by CNN on Oct. 19, 2021, about former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon being held in contempt of a subpoena by the House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol.

His interviews were seen during The Lead with Jake Tapper and The Situation Room—watch an ABC syndication of the interview:

Explains Banks, “We can go up and down the federal court hierarchy multiple times—so, District Court, Court of Appeals, and even the United States Supreme Court could potentially hear one of these cases.

“Historically, one of the remarkable things about the clash between the executive and the legislature in this kind of setting, involving executive privilege and congressional demands for information, is that almost all of the time the parties have negotiated a settlement.”

“A Specialized Society?” Professor Mark Nevitt Discusses Monitoring Military for Domestic Extremists in The Washington Post

The Pentagon wants to take a harder line on domestic extremism. How far can it go?

(The Washington Post | May 5, 2021) Pentagon officials are considering new restrictions on service members’ interactions with far-right groups, part of the military’s reckoning with extremism, but the measures could trigger legal challenges from critics who say they would violate First Amendment rights.

Under a review launched by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Defense Department officials are reexamining rules governing troops’ affiliations with anti-government and white supremacist movements, ties that currently are permissible in limited circumstances.

Austin, who has pledged zero tolerance for extremism, ordered the review after the events of Jan. 6, when rioters including a few dozen veterans — and a handful of current service members — stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the presidential election results …

Mark Nevitt, a former Navy lawyer who teaches at the Syracuse University College of Law, pointed to other cases in which courts have characterized the military as a “specialized society separate from society.”

“Federal courts will likely provide a healthy dose of deference to the military if challenged, particularly if the military can link the new definition to the underlying military mission and good order and discipline,” he said …

Read the full article.

The Legal Examiner Talks to Professor William C. Banks About Domestic Terrorism Cases

Domestic terrorism prosecutions reach all-time high

(The Legal Examiner | Jan. 19, 2021) The insurrection attempt by a mob on the nation’s capitol may be part of a larger trend of increasing incidents of right-wing domestic terrorism.

“I think it’s not a one-off,” said William C. Banks, law professor at Syracuse University College of Law. “We’re in a very critical period right now that might even abate or reverse itself. I’m hopeful that it will. I think we’re going to have to see.”

Banks said he hopes the leadership of Joe Biden’s administration will have a “more calming effect” than President Trump.

Last year saw the highest number of domestic terrorism prosecutions brought by the federal government around the country in the 25 years since government tracking of these cases began, according to a report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Banks is not affiliated with TRAC.

In all, U.S. Attorneys’ offices brought 183 domestic terrorism cases in 2020, compared with 90 in 2019, 63 in 2018 and 69 in 2017, according to the TRAC report, which used data the clearinghouse obtained through litigation …

Read the full article …

Domestic terrorism prosecutions reach all-time high

Professor William C. Banks Helps Explain Insurrection Act for USA Today

What is the Insurrection Act and how could Trump use it? Here’s what to know

(USA Today | Jan. 11, 2021) False social media posts swirled late Sunday that President Donald Trump in the wake of the U.S. Capitol riots had invoked the Insurrection Act, a law that allows the president to deploy the military to quell rebellion.

Tweets sharing images of military personnel in Washington continued to spread Monday morning and became a trending term on Twitter. However, Trump has not invoked the law.

The law, which has existed in various forms since the time of George Washington and in its current state since the Civil War, allows the president to dispatch the military or federalize the National Guard in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law …

William Banks, a Syracuse University College of Law Board of Advisors Distinguished Professor, said that when thinking about the Insurrection Act, it’s important to remember one of the most basic principles of the United States’ founding: that the military not be involved in civilian affairs.

“The Insurrection Act lays into U.S. law an exception to that background principle,” Banks said.

In most cases, a state would want to rely on National Guard troops in situations of unrest. The Insurrection Act is generally reserved for when “things are really bad,” Banks said …

… Hoffmeister and Banks said, however, there was no need for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act on Jan. 6. given the federal government’s control of the district’s National Guard and federal law enforcement. Invoking the Act would have further allowed Trump to send active-duty military to the district when he already in effect had control over its National Guard and federal police …

Read the full article.

 

Corri Zoli Discusses Mail Bomb Attacks & Domestic Terrorism on Spectrum News

Are Recent Suspicious Packages an Act of Political Terrorism?

(Spectrum News | Oct. 25, 2018) One after the other, suspicious packages were delivered to the media and liberal leaders, many in New York City.

“This is a very painful time in our nation. It’s a time when people are feeling a lot of hate in the air,” said Bill de Blasio, (D) New York City Mayor.

Some are calling it domestic terrorism and others call it political terrorism.

“Someone one who might be trying to use scare tactics or trying to enhance political passions, make partisan divisions worse,” said Corri Zoli, Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism Research Director.

It is a scary thought for a country largely functioning on a two-party system.

Zoli said, “It’s not accurate to characterize opposition groups as enemies in a two-party system that structures the United States.”

But, is that what we’re seeing?

In 2017, the target appeared to be on the other side of the aisle, members of Republican Congressional baseball team.

“Is this a retaliatory attack for those attacks? This is the problem with polarization. You get these kind of escalating dynamics…clearly this is an expression of partisanship gone awry,” said Zoli …

Watch the whole segment.

 

“A Worrisome Case”: William C. Banks Examines Election Season Attempted Mail Bombs with Bloomberg Law

Law Enforcement Probes Attempted Mail Bombs

(Bloomberg Law | 10.25.18) William Banks, a professor at Syracuse Law School, discusses law enforcement efforts after several high-profile democrats, public figures, and the CNN newsroom in New York received apparent explosive devices over the course of several days …

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2018-10-25/law-enforcement-probes-attempted-mail-bombs-radio

It’s Time to Address the Real Motive in Westminster, Manchester, and Now London: Sectarian Hatred in Our Own Back Yards

By Corri Zoli

(Re-published from The Huffington Post | June 9, 2017) Within 12 hours of the London Bridge attacks on June 3, 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May finally said “enough is enough” and called for an explicit, unapologetic focus on Islamist extremism, which is being incubated in far too many British enclaves—in London, Birmingham, Manchester, and elsewhere.

Admitting what British-based security critics have long known—that “there is far too much tolerance of extremism in our country”—May even asserted “the superiority” of pluralistic British civic values. Better late than never, perhaps, but it is still worrisome that it took the UK government three attacks in under three months, with 30 dead, 10 of whom were under 20 years old, to remember that this (and most) nation’s civic values are better than the jihadists’.

Our prevailing logic—exemplified in the The New York Times—has been exactly backwards. After terrorist attacks, victims of terrorism need not exercise “maximum vigilance” lest we all fall prey to “divisive ethnic, racist and religious hatreds.” It’s extremists who promote and use violence and who are beset by hatred. Salman Abedi killed British teenagers because he views them through a prism of prejudicial hate—their “Western” ethnicity, British nationality, assumed religious beliefs, and secular lifestyles (young girls enjoying music in public). ISIS made this case in Dabiq, “Why We Hate You & Why We Kill You,” just as London Bridge attackers fanned out from their low-tech terrorist van, as per ISIS instructions, to murder pedestrians on the open street. Such bigotry is thus operationalized not only to spread hatred but to kill.

It is time to name the sectarian hatred—against Western culture, minority religions, ethnic groups, gender and sexual identities, and others—that motivates much global terrorism and defines thousands of Islamist organizations. Policymakers who tell us “we will not be divided” are like Alice in Wonderland’s white rabbit—too late. Each attack brings officials who have tumbled down the rabbit hole of confused logic and policy, imploring the public that the best response to murderous hate is unity—something victims never contested. Suspects are scooped up by law enforcement in a brief frenzy, while weaponized systems of sectarian hatred in neighborhoods and networks are left to fester.

Ordinary people are plotted against as “soft targets,” neighbors and family desperately report radicals to authorities that demur, and victims are lectured to by helpless politicians who defend failed policies as the new normal (it’s not). Meanwhile, pub and concert goers, tourists, and school teachers pay the price for authorities’ failed understanding, as they fight off strategic killers in public places with chairs and bottles, while forced to play battlefield medics, using shirts as tourniquets for mortally wounded compatriots.

Thankfully, this empty narrative and emptier policy response is eroding, largely due to public pressure …

To read the whole article, click here.

 

Cora True-Frost Presents on “Conditions Conducive to Terrorism” at IntLawGrrls Conference

INSCT Affiliated Faculty Member C. Cora True-Frost helped the Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law celebrate its 10th IntLawGrrls Conference on March 2 and 3, 2017.

Since its founding a decade ago, IntLawGrrls: Voices on International Law, Policy, Practice has grown into a premier international law blog written primarily by women—several hundred of them—plus a few men.

Co-sponsors of the conference and the IntLawGrrls initiative include the American Society of International Law, ASIL’s Women in International Law Interest Group, the Planethood Foundation, and Georgia Law’s chapter of the International Law Students Association.

True-Frost spoke on the Laws and War and Counterterrorism Track. Her paper—“Conditions Conducive to Terrorism: The Role of ‘Civil Society’ in International Security”—is part of a project funded by the Andrew Berlin Family National Security Research Fund, administered by INSCT.

100 from around world to take part in IntLawGrrls! 10th Birthday Conference on March 2 and 3 at Georgia Law

Nathan Sales Discusses Low Number of Far Right Terrorism Charges

Just 13 Right-Wing Extremists Have Been Charged With Terrorism Since 9/11

(The Daily Caller | Dec. 8, 2016) A Daily Caller analysis found that just 13 far-right extremists have been indicted on federal terrorism charges since Sept. 11, 2001, despite liberal journalists, groups and academics spreading the narrative that far-right extremists are just as or more dangerous than Islamic terrorists.

“Prosecutors often prefer the easiest crime to prove.”

Both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center maintain lists of right-wing extremists. The lists combined contain 13 individuals charged with federal terrorism or terrorism-related charges.

The Department of Justice has made public a list of 580 individuals convicted of terrorism and terror-related charges between 9/11 and the end of 2014, and Republican Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’ office compiled a list of 131 individuals implicated in terrorism from March 2014 to June 22, 2016. Neither of these lists contain far-right terrorists. Other publicly available information reveals no additional federal terrorism indictments for right-wing extremists.

Nathan Sales, an associate professor of law at Syracuse University College of Law and the former deputy assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, told The Daily Caller “prosecutors often prefer the easiest crime to prove” …

… Sales added that terrorists being charged with lesser crimes is something that occurs across the board with foreign terrorists alike.

“If you have an ISIS member who has attempted to blow up a subway car in Washington, D.C., a simple weapons charge will often be easier to prove rather than a terrorism-related charge which requires you to demonstrate a specific mental state like the intent to coerce or intimidate a civilian population. So, that’s actually a dynamic you see pretty frequently in international terrorism cases as well,” the former DHS official said …

Just 13 Right-Wing Extremists Have Been Charged With Terrorism Since 9/11