MSNBC’s Figliuzzi: ‘Notion’ Antifa Is Some Kind of ‘Organized Group Is Laughable’

Former FBI official and MSNBC national security contributor Frank Figliuzzi said President Donald Trump forwarding the “notion” that Antifa was a violent organized group is “laughable.”

Anchor Nicolle Wallace said, “I want to press you on the words he used today. Today, he said, I call on the Proud Boys to stand down and let law enforcement do its job. It sounded to me like he saw white supremacists as aligned with police. I mean, isn’t Christopher Wray testifying that law enforcement’s central threat to domestic peace and security is white supremacist inspired domestic terrorism. Doesn’t he have that exactly backward?”

Figliuzzi said, “Yeah. The one person in Washington these days who seems not to be equivocating at all is Chris Wray, the FBI director, who sees all of the intelligence from a 30,000-foot level, from local, county, and state law enforcement agencies across the board. We need to pay attention when he says the top priority is hate-based domestic terrorism groups, and they are on the far right.”

He continued. “Furthermore, this notion of Antifa, as being some kind of organized group, is laughable. Let me assure you something. If the FBI, who is very good at dismantling structured organizations, and using various federal legislation to do so, if they had a shot at taking down a violent organization, they would do it. But there’s no organization to it.”

He added, “There’s no home office in Springfield for Antifa. There’s no president for Antifa. And so it’s a movement and an ideology. It’s not to downplay those who do violence within it. But it’s rather to say, it’s a falsehood to claim equivalency between an ideology and organized hate violence groups.”

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