Dollars against Democracy: Domestic Terrorist Financing in the Aftermath of... (EventID=111244)

Connect with the House Financial Services Committee
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On Thursday, February 25, 2021, from 10:00 a.m. (ET) National Security, International Development, and Monetary Policy Subcommittee Chairman Himes and Ranking Member Hill will host a virtual hearing entitled, “Dollars against Democracy: Domestic Terrorist Financing in the Aftermath of Insurrection."
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Witnesses for this one-panel hearing will be:

• Iman Boukadoum, Senior Manager, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

• Lecia Brooks, Executive Director, Southern Poverty Law Center

• Daniel L. Glaser, Global Head Jurisdictional Services and Head of Washington, DC Office, K2 Integrity, Senior Advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and former Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, U.S. Department of the Treasury

• Dr. Daniel Rogers, Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer, Global Disinformation Index

• Dr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, CEO, Valens Global

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American Domestic Extremism

On January 6th, every Member of Congress and their staff were put in grave danger by a violent, extremist mob. The insurrection, which was incited by former President Trump, is part of a history of domestic extremism and terrorism with its roots in white supremacy in the United States beginning with the founding of the KKK in the 1860s, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, the lynchings of innocent Black Americans like Emmett Till in 1955, and more modern events such as the deadly “Unite the Right” Charlottesville rally in 2017. More recently, there has been a sharp increase in the number of hate-crime incidents towards targeted groups, including the LGBTQ+, Latinx, Black, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Jewish communities. There has also been a year-over-year increase of domestic-terrorism fatalities, with 90% of U.S. extremist murders in 2019 tied to right-wing extremism, including white supremacy. Since 9/11, Washington has been primarily concerned with foreign ideologies inspiring American terrorists; it is now clear that domestic extremism and terrorism is as severe a threat.3,4 While the means of financing has evolved since the abolition of slavery, domestic extremism continues to rely on informal financing networks and terrorist acts that do not necessarily require significant planning or funding. The hearing will provide an opportunity to look at the current and future avenues of financing and how those avenues can by thwarted to impede the ability of extremists, such as those who were seen on January 6th, to recruit and radicalize individuals and fund future attacks.

How Extremists Fund their Activities

As with most terrorist attacks, it costs little to break the windows of the Capitol and threaten Members of Congress and other U.S. Capitol employees. Those acts, however, were the product of costlier activities such as radicalization, organization, planning, training, and travel designed to move individuals from passively supporting extremist ideologies to participating in the acts of domestic terrorism witnessed on January 6th. Much of this activity runs through traditional bricks-and-mortar financial institutions (FIs), and some of it may be illegal or suspicious enough to raise red flags, causing the filing of Suspicious Activity Reports with the Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and potential account closure. Most domestic terrorist-related transactions, however, can be impossible to distinguish from licit transactions (e.g., a plane ticket or a store purchase) without other information. Additionally, the documentation seen by banks and payment processors does not include an itemized list of a customer’s purchase, thus they cannot evaluate the content of a purchase for suspicious activity.

Further, due to privacy rights and civil liberties and because “domestic terrorism” is not a chargeable federal crime, the bounds of domestic terrorism investigations are strictly limited. Different from U.S.-based international terrorism cases where there are authorities such as electronic surveillance, delayed notification of search warrants, and orders for business and bank records through Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Courts, with domestic terrorism, law enforcement cannot pursue the same proactive investigations, potentially missing data on those who have been radicalized to violence.

Domestic extremists are aware that FIs may report their activity for law enforcement use, so as seen in some of the arrests related to the January 6th attack, they are increasingly choosing non-traditional forms of finance to support...