For years, we watched as the Biden administration investigated ordinary, everyday Americans. Now, thanks to documents declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, we know why this was happening.

From Just the News. The Biden administration authorized federal law enforcement four years ago to target Americans engaged in “concerning non-criminal behavior” in the name of fighting domestic terrorism, with a specific eye on those serving in the military, owning firearms, or spreading what officials considered to be “xenophobic” disinformation, according to newly declassified documents.

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The stunning breadth of the mandate was disclosed when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently released a fully unredacted version of the prior administration’s “Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism.”

The June 2021 memo exposed for the first time the law enforcement and intelligence framework that led the FBI to monitor and probe conservative Catholics and parents who protested against some school board policies and justified Homeland Security to engage in censorship or debanking of Americans the administration considered to be potential enemies of the state. …

You can read the full memo here.

Weaponizing law enforcement against its own citizens

For decades, FBI agents have been required to meet stringent requirements for opening criminal and national security investigations known as a “predicate.” The predicate for a full investigation required “an articulable factual basis” that “reasonably indicates” a crime or national security threat has or is about to occur, according to the Attorney General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations. …

Legal experts and lawmakers told Just the News on Tuesday they were deeply concerned the Biden-era memo substantially lowered the standard to “concerning” behavior instead of criminality, potentially jeopardizing civil liberties and giving license to weaponize police powers against Americans who had different views than the governing administration on issues like the Second Amendment and COVID-19. …

Dr. John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and a former Justice Department official, said the memo’s mandate on probing “non-criminal behavior” was particularly concerning.

“What Tulsi Gabbard declassified was the rest of the document that was there, and what was shocking to me is that the types of tools and responses that they have been making for people who are engaged in some type of violence actually applied to non-violent individuals, non-criminal activity that was there,” Lott said.

Misinterpreting iconography, phrases in common American use

For example, the memo directed intelligence and law enforcement agencies to incorporate “domestic terrorism iconography, symbology, and phraseology” in its counterterrorism toolbox, images that are often used in a benign manner by many Americans.

An earlier, leaked internal FBI memo showed the bureau paid special attention to symbols made prominent during the American Revolution. These included the Gadsden Flag, and America’s first national flag, depicting 13 stars and stripes, designed by Betsy Ross, as examples of iconography used by militia violent extremists. The memo also identified pro-second amendment messages as possible indicators of domestic terrorism.

Lott says the inclusion of common conservative images without a left-wing equivalent is problematic, and suggests it could be an indicator of bias. …

The long-term goals of the strategy also identify areas important to combating domestic extremism that clearly overlap with key Democratic Party priorities, including calls for increased gun control measures, centering “hate crimes” in law enforcement and “increasing faith in democracy and government.”

The memo directed the Biden Domestic Policy Council to “drive…executive and legislative action” to ban assault weapons, ban high-capacity magazines, rein in “ghost guns,” and encourage states to adopt red-flag laws, in order to eliminate the “means for perpetrating acts of domestic terrorism.” …

Biden targeted disinformation as domestic terrorism

Additionally, the memo shows the administration directly linked the spread of disinformation to the growing prevalence of domestic terrorism. The memo directs agencies across the federal government to increase information sharing in order to improve the government’s “understanding of how foreign state and non-state information operations, particularly disinformation, relate to the domestic terrorism threat.”  …

In order to combat online disinformation, the administration directed agencies, including Homeland Security, the State Department and USAID, to implement “digital literacy” programming designed to combat domestic terrorism recruitment. This included diverting funding to research its effectiveness and working with local partners. …

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(Excerpt from Just the News. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America – Joe Biden, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87229821)