if there are people who have anti-government views but cone express views they want to overthrow the government with force, or organize and plot to kill school board officials or journalists, then the department has no reason to investigate them and they won t. when there is violence, it should be investigated. and there is no domestic terrorism statute in the united states. that doesn t mean the department doesn t have serious tool they can use. there are a number of crime they can use to charge domestic terrorists. sentencing enhancements they can use to put them behind bars for a period of time. what we need is an increased focus on those type of answers. thanks for joining us. coming up, controversy when it come to stock trading including
case was more than a decade ago. also this week on capitol hill, the doj unveiled a new tool in their fight to promote the next january 6th attack. a domestic terrorism union. domestic terrorism is on the rise. a number of fbi investigations over the past two years since march 2020 has more than doubled. we ve seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government, and anti-authority ideologies. so the threat is undeniable. but how exactly will this unit make americans safer? who better to ask than someone who used to work inside the justice department? joining me now, matt miller. he served with the director of affairs under the attorney general eric holder. also an msnbc contributor. thank you for spending time with us. let s talk about some of the new charges filed against the oath keepers.
a lot of people taushs about seditious conspiracy not being an easy charge to prove. what does this mean? what does it mean that the doj took this step with this specific charge? it was a critical step for the department to take. i don t think it is one that they took lightly. there is a great deal of discussion and debate and at times disagreement over whether the evidence could eventually support these charges. i think it is important for two reasons. number one, these are very serious charges and it is important that you charge the most serious crime you can prove in a case like this to both, so that you actually achieve justice and send people to jail for the longest sentences you can get. so you have the ability to potentially film witnesses, suspects, and get them to turn against other people who may have been part of the plot. it is also important because look, the department of citizens name certain crimes and treat different crimes differently. the same reason we call people
ongoing threat. so it is important the department recognizes this. what it does is it brings focus and resources, which is what you need to turn investigations into cases and cases into serious sentences. and bring focus and resources. there will be a bit of a challenge. correct me if i m wrong. when you re dealing with domestic extremists, you have to walk this front line and what is protected under the first amendment. how does this complicate investigations? so much of the work of law enforcement is intelligence. especially when you re tracking terrorism. you need to get out there before a claim is carry out. how does someone say i want to overthrow the government, as opposed to saying i m not going to go overturn the government. a the question.
although they did charge people with crimes when they could prove him. wasn t in focus from the leadership. because they knew that focusing on it would anger the then president. if you look at where this new domestic terrorism will be housed, inside the national security division, that was created in the wake of 9/11. and it was created after 9/11 because doj and the fbi recognized that the department did not have enough of a focus and it didn t investigate national security terrorism crimes in the way with the kind of focus and rigorous effort that it required. so it created this division. and i think what we ve seen over time, not to say that the threat of international terrorism has diminished. certainly the threat of domestic terror has risen and risen. if you look at the number of attacks in reason years, domestic terrorism far outweighs international terrorism as an