The FBI is not treating the Monday shooting in Nashville that killed six, including three small children, as an act of domestic terrorism, The Daily Wire has learned.
The FBI’s definition of domestic terrorism is “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.”
The shooter was a 28-year-old woman who identified as a man and was a former student at the Christian elementary school. Although transgender activists have complained of recent actions by the Tennessee legislature relating to transgender youth, police have not divulged a motive in the attack. The shooter had a “manifesto,” police said, though its contents have not been released.
“If it was terrorism, we would have federal jurisdiction. Given that Nashville metro is leading the investigation, I think you can take a lot from that,” Elizabeth Clement-Webb, a spokesperson for the Memphis Field Office of the FBI — which includes Nashville — told The Daily Wire.
She said that local police were running the investigation, adding that the FBI is “in an assistance role” with Nashville partners.
“I think we’ll learn more over time, but at this time it does not appear to be federal,” she said.
Asked whether the FBI was specifically monitoring radical trans activists as a source of potential domestic terrorism, the FBI spokeswoman — who is the daughter of a former Democrat congressman — said “No,” though she added that the FBI is always alert for all threats.
A transgender radical group run in part by a former staffer for a Virginia Democrat lawmaker is planning a “Trans Day of Vengeance” for Saturday, to avenge a “trans genocide.” The event, on whose web page organizers discuss Molotov cocktails, is set to occur at the Supreme Court. Justice Brett Kavanaugh is a target of trans radicals and survived an assassination attempt last year.
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The FBI’s Washington Field Office has jurisdiction over the Supreme Court area. A spokeswoman for that office, whose email signature read “Carly R. Kennedy (she/her),” declined to say whether the FBI was monitoring that event nor whether it was studying radical trans activists as a source of domestic terrorism.
“I believe your request would be best handled by the National Press Office at FBI Headquarters,” she wrote.
The national press office responded to a question about the “Day of Vengeance” by writing that “membership in a group is not illegal in and of itself. In fact, it is protected by the First Amendment. The FBI will never open an investigation based solely on protected First Amendment activity. We focus on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security.”
Despite the statement, the bureau has been criticized for targeting Christian and conservative individuals and groups as domestic terrorists. A document showed this year that the FBI was training a specific eye on “radical-traditionalist Catholics,” compiling a dossier citing sources like the Southern Poverty Law Center to say that the group needed to be monitored for “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists in radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology.” The FBI rescinded the document after it leaked to the media.
The FBI’s Counterterrorism Division also “threat tagged” parents who advocated before their school boards after the White House worked with the National School Board Association to develop a memo likening members of the group to “domestic terrorists” and invoking the PATRIOT Act.
Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, later said he had evidence that the FBI was juking the stats by not including some leftist terrorism and contorting other incidents to count them as “right-wing.”
Days after Biden took office, a Department of Homeland Security-linked “fusion center” issued a report saying that there was a “rarity of targeted left-wing extremist attacks,” and that right-wing domestic violent extremists “were responsible for the majority of deadly domestic terrorist activity.”