Ex-FBI intel chief: DOJ must investigate 'anti-fascist' bounties for tracking conservative justices
An Antifa-style group offering bounties for tips on sightings of conservative Supreme Court justices should be "interpreted as a threat," said former FBI Assistant Director of Intelligence Kevin Brock, as it's "a danger to America" if the Justice Department treats threats of violence from the left more lightly than threats from the right.
On Friday, ShutDownDC, a self-described anti-fascist group, tweeted that it would pay up to $250 to service industry workers in Washington, D.C., if they alerted them to sightings of the conservative justices who upheld a pro-life abortion law in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
"DC Service Industry Workers... If you see Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Coney Barrett or Roberts DM us with the details!" ShutDownDC tweeted. "We'll venmo you $50 for a confirmed sighting and $200 if they're still there 30 mins after your message."
Tucker Carlson mentioned the group's tweet during his Fox News TV show on Friday, telling his viewers to "flood them with reported sightings until they give up."
While ShutDownDC said they received many false sightings following Carlson's show, they also got an increase in donations.
The Antifa group's tweet came after protesters disrupted Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh's dinner at a Washington, D.C., steak house last Wednesday, following ShutDownDC tweeting that someone had sent them a tip that he was there.
"DM us if you want to join him…we're sure he can pull up a seat!" the group tweeted.
During Carlson's segment, he said the "DOJ has done nothing," despite ShutDownDC's posted offer.
"The threat environment related to the Dobbs decision is crackling right now," Brock, the former FBI intel chief, told Just the News on Tuesday,
In light of the violence perpetrated by pro-abortion groups against pregnancy centers and pro-life organizations since Dobbs, "any call from pro-abortion supporters" against Supreme Court justices has "to be interpreted as a threat by any reasonable person," he said.
The DOJ should be expected take investigative steps to determine who the people are that are trying to get the public to report on the whereabouts of Supreme Court justices, Brock argued.
The "reasonable interpretation" of ShutDownDC's offer "will be, at minimum, to intimidate justices, and at worst, physically harm them," he said.
"The overriding concern is that the DOJ is not responding to threats of violence emanating from the left side of the political spectrum as diligently as they are when they emanate from the right side of the political spectrum," Brock warned. "That is a danger to America."
The DOJ didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
After the draft majority opinion in the Dobbs decision was leaked in May, a Wisconsin pro-life organization was vandalized with Molotov cocktails by pro-abortion group Jane's Revenge.
Leftist groups "like Black Lives Matter or Antifa that have never really been brought to heel," Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisc.) told "Just the News, Not Noise" TV show after the attack. "You don't hear politicians on the left attacking them or criticizing them.
"And, as the result, they run around, and it is a scary situation because if you know where a Supreme Court Justice lives," then "of course" Antifa would go there because "there's nothing they would not do because they are you know closely affiliated [with] — or, given what their flag looks like — communist groups, and it is a very scary thing for anybody right now."
A new anti-fascist group called Bite Back DC held its first protest on June 24, the day that the Dobbs decision was announced. The Antifa members pushed through a line of bike police officers, who had tried to keep them from marching down 3rd Street. They also burned an American flag next to a handwritten sign that read "F*** YOU MPD."
Meanwhile, Antifa went on a violent rampage in Portland, Ore., on July 4, taking advantage of stretched police resources over the holiday to smash up businesses and cars, terrorize citizens attending a fireworks display downtown and attempt to set ablaze the federal courthouse, Andy Ngo reported on Twitter.
The Portland Police asked the FBI to step in to "assume control of specific investigations," allowing police "resources to be used to identify and arrest those suspects."
Portland Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler declined to comment on police reports that roughly 100 rioters clad in black bloc vandalized buildings and maced a hotel security guard who asked the intruders to leave the property.
At the end of April, Oregon GOP gubernatorial candidate Stan Pulliam said that the Portland police department took more than 20 minutes to respond to an alleged Antifa attack on his campaign event held near the law enforcement headquarters.
In San Diego last December, nearly a year after Antifa assaulted Trump supporters during a "Patriot March" in Pacific Beach, seven of the leftist group's members were charged in connection with eight assaults and conspiracy to commit a riot.
Last month, Trump posted on his Truth Social account after his former adviser, Peter Navarro, was arrested for defying a Jan. 6 committee subpoena, comparing the disparate treatment of Navarro to Antifa.
"Our great trade genius, Professor Peter Navarro, was just handcuffed, shackled, and put in jail, while the lowlifes of ANTIFA & BLM are allowed to rip off the public, roam free on the streets, kill people, and destroy our once great cities (all run by Democrats)," the former president wrote.
"When will this end? The American people will not stand for it much longer! Great patriotic heroes are being created every day. FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE must rule the day!"