Domestic Terrorism Is a Real Threat, Not a Convenient Political Label

DOJ has internal tools that kept domestic terrorism from becoming a political label in search of facts. They only work if leadership treats them as real.

The Onion ran a headline the other day that was funny because it was so ridiculous: “DHS Warns Any Action By Americans Will Be Treated As Domestic Terrorism.” In the piece, DHS warns that “anything and everything Americans do” will be treated as a national security threat. Picking up groceries? Domestic terrorism. Calling a friend? Domestic terrorism. Sneezing? You guessed it.

The joke works because it takes a real impulse and turns it into a cartoon. Call something “domestic terrorism” early. Say it loudly. Let the label do the work that facts have not yet done.

If you are reading this as a former Justice Department employee, you know how dangerous that impulse is inside a place like DOJ. You also know that the department once built internal discipline precisely to prevent it. That discipline had names. It had citations. It had routing requirements. It had approvals. That process was important because what followed carried important consequences for the department.

What we are now watching now is that process being treated as optional.

I spent nearly a decade as the main point of contact within DOJ for domestic terrorism matters.

Domestic terrorism exists. The last decade is a catalogue of mass casualty attacks and targeted violence driven by ideology, hate, grievance, and conspiratorial thinking. Congress wrote the domestic terrorism definition because the country learned, painfully, that the threat at home could be as lethal as the threat abroad. This was legislative engineering, not messaging: a definition designed to control when the government can invoke terrorism authorities.

When DOJ leaders and political appointees treat “domestic terrorism” as a political label, two things happen at once. Civil liberties suffer. National security suffers. The public sees the term as propaganda. Agents and prosecutors get pulled toward a narrative instead of a fact pattern. Data becomes unreliable. Resources are misallocated. Policy drifts and prevention becomes harder.

The Onion is exaggerating for effect, but the underlying trend is real, damaging, and must be resisted.

Domestic terrorism has a definition. The definition has consequences.

Congress defined “domestic terrorism” in 18 U.S.C. § 2331(5). It is not a loose description of “bad people with opinions.” It is activity that involves acts dangerous to human life that violate criminal law, appear intended to intimidate civilians or coerce government, and occur primarily in the United States.

The legislative history matters because it explains the intent behind the law. Congress debated versions of the definition in the mid-1990s and returned to it after 9/11, with the Oklahoma City bombing as the paradigm case that made clear the need to name and address domestic terror violence.

Congress also treated the domestic definition as an analogue to the “international terrorism” definition already in § 2331, with the core elements aligned and territoriality as the key distinction.

That history is not academic. The definition interacts with real authorities. It affects how cases are categorized, how tools are justified, how sentencing exposure is argued, and how the government speaks in court filings and public statements.

That is why the use of the term cannot be treated as mere rhetoric.

When “domestic terrorism” becomes a press release conclusion rather than a legally grounded assessment, the label becomes a routing mechanism. A routing mechanism becomes a policy choice. A policy choice becomes a threat picture that no longer matches reality.

DOJ used to have internal discipline to prevent narrative-first enforcement

The Attorney General’s Guidelines for FBI Domestic Operations (The AG Guidelines) were written to regulate the use of investigative authority in a way that is consistent, reviewable, and tethered to lawful purpose. The AG Guidelines are internal guidance and do not create enforceable rights.

But inside DOJ, that was never the point. The point was that internal guidance is what makes a large bureaucracy predictable, defensible, and honest.

The AG Guidelines include a simple accountability mechanism that is easy to ignore until you need it. Departures from the Guidelines must be approved at senior FBI leadership levels. Written notice of departures must be provided to the Criminal Division and National Security Division (NSD), which then notify the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General.

That requirement exists because “flexibility” without documentation becomes discretion without constraint.

The Justice Manual plays a parallel role for prosecutors. It is, or was, DOJ’s “rulebook for federal prosecutors.”

In the domestic violent extremism arena, DOJ updated the Justice Manual to force coordination, reduce freelancing across districts, and standardize how the Department talks about domestic terrorism in real cases.

The domestic violent extremism (DVE) policy in the Justice Manual begins with an institutional premise: DVE, including domestic terrorism, is a serious national threat, and the Justice Department must share information and coordinate to promote consistency and transparency.

The policy then sets requirements that matter in practice.

U.S. Attorney’s Offices must designate matters as “DVE-related” when they involve suspected DVE or have a material nexus to DVE, including any matter involving conduct that meets the statutory definition of domestic terrorism in § 2331(5). U.S. Attorney’s Offices must notify NSD’s Counterterrorism Section of all DVE-related matters as soon as practicable.

For significant cases, listed as Category 1 matters, the Justice Manual requires senior NSD approval for major investigative and prosecutive steps, including warrants, charging decisions, plea agreements, and sentencing filings. It also requires prior approval for court filings that describe a nexus between the defendant or conduct and DVE or groups engaged in DVE, unless the exact description has already been approved in a prior filing.

That last requirement is particularly important. It is DOJ saying: do not improvise the “domestic terrorism” story in court. Staff it. Approve it. Make the Justice Department own it. Keep it consistent across districts.

Those were the internal tools that kept domestic terrorism from becoming a political label in search of facts.

They only work if leadership treats them as real.

Congress demanded data so oversight could be grounded in facts

Congress did not stop at definitions and internal policy. It demanded reporting.

In December 2019, Congress required the FBI and DHS to provide annual reports detailing domestic terrorism incidents, investigations by category, and related federal charges.

In 2022, the chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee concluded that the FBI failed to provide most of the required data. But the Bureau should should have been able to produce the incident and investigation data Congress required.

Because without consistent incident and investigation data, the term “domestic terrorism” becomes whatever the leadership says it is this week. That makes oversight impossible. It also makes honest internal decision-making harder, because people inside the system start to feel the pressure to match the line.

DOJ’s own strategic assessment acknowledges that internal tracking and coordination were strengthened through guidance and Justice Manual updates, including requiring U.S. Attorney’s Offices to provide information to NSD on domestic terrorism matters and codifying notification and coordination requirements to promote consistency and oversight.

That is the Justice Department admitting, in its own documents, that consistency requires structure.

A system that cannot report its own data is a system that cannot explain itself. A system that cannot explain itself will default to labels.

The Onion’s joke is a warning about what happens next.

Domestic terrorism work is hard because the First Amendment is real

Domestic terrorism investigations are not hard because agents and prosecutors lack tools. They are hard because the conduct often runs alongside lawful political activity. The legal terrain forces you to separate speech from action, protest from planning, civil disobedience from violence.

The FBI’s own guidance on protests states plainly that Americans regularly engage in protected First Amendment activity such as protests and pickets, and that while law enforcement may take steps to maintain order and safety, surveillance and intelligence collection in protest contexts raises serious constitutional and public concerns.

The same guidance emphasizes the obligation to protect the country while upholding the Constitution.

The AG Guidelines reflect this reality by contemplating limited information collection around demonstrations in certain circumstances, aimed at protecting public health and safety and First Amendment rights, as well as focused on practical details such as timing, routes, and expected participation.

The FBI’s protest guidance is even more direct: investigative activity cannot be used just to monitor protected speech and association.

This is the point that gets crushed when senior officials treat “domestic terrorism” as a talking point. The label invites people to skip the hard work of differentiating protected political activity from conduct that meets the legal standard for domestic terrorism. Once the label is out, it pressures the system to act like the outcome is already known.

Those who have spent their careers within DOJ insisting on predication, documentation, and proportionality know what comes next. Attorney questions start to sound like talking points. Case agents start to feel like their work is being graded on whether it supports the chosen storyline. Review turns into a box-check. People who object get isolated.

This is how drift happens in practice—case by case, review by review, until the standard disappears.

What abandonment looks like

Abandonment of the standard looks like leadership using the term “domestic terrorism” publicly before the Department has done the staffing and approvals its own policy requires.

It looks like DOJ treating the Justice Manual as a set of citations to sprinkle into memos rather than a system that controls how DVE matters are tagged, routed to NSD, and described in court filings.

It looks like the FBI treating the AG Guidelines as something to invoke when convenient, rather than a framework with real departure documentation and notice requirements that exist for accountability.

It looks like DOJ failing to produce the domestic terrorism incident and investigation data Congress required, leaving the public and Congress to argue about “domestic terrorism” with competing anecdotes and political narratives instead of shared facts.

Put simply: the Justice Department had internal tools designed to make domestic terrorism work consistent and reviewable. Those tools are being treated as optional while the label is being used as a weapon.

That is how our country gets closer to the Onion’s premise, not in its literal form, but in its governing logic.

A direct ask

For a Justice Department that still wants to be taken seriously, the path forward is not complicated. Yet it is difficult primarily because it requires restraint from people who benefit from the label.

• Publish the domestic terrorism and DVE data Congress required, with clear methodology.

• Reaffirm, in writing, that “domestic terrorism” is a statutory definition, not a public relations tool, and that DOJ will not use it publicly absent evidentiary support that fits § 2331(5).

• Enforce the Justice Manual’s staffing and approval rules as written, including control of “nexus” descriptions in filings.

• Document departures from the AG Guidelines and comply with the written notice requirements up the chain.

If those steps sound basic, that is the point. The Justice Department’s legitimacy is built out of basics done consistently.

Those of us who dedicated our careers to the Justice Department cared about those basics. We cared about the line between lawful conduct and unlawful violence. We cared about the difference between an investigation and a political project. We cared about the department not becoming a machine that chases enemies rather than crimes.

The heartbreaking part is that we know what disciplined, apolitical justice looks like because we once lived it, and we are now being asked to accept its demolition as ordinary.

The Onion is mocking the end state. The job, now, is to stop sliding toward it.

Thomas E. Brzozowski is a former counsel for domestic terrorism in the U.S. Department of Justice.