The Domestic Terror Arm of MAGA

Summary

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, Justice, and the Courts

Episode: The Domestic Terror Arm of MAGA
Date: January 16, 2021
Guest: Juliette Kayyem, National Security Expert and former Assistant Secretary at DHS

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Episode Overview

This episode of Amicus explores the legal, political, and security fallout from the January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, framing it as a form of domestic terrorism with complex roots and implications. Host Dahlia Lithwick and guest Juliette Kayyem delve deeply into the concepts of stochastic terrorism, the organization and motivation of the attackers, the roles played by President Trump and his enablers, and necessary responses for law enforcement, political institutions, and broader American society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding Stochastic Terrorism ([04:29])

• Definition/Explanation
  • Kayyem describes “stochastic terrorism” as violence incited by a leader in ways that are intentionally vague, increasing the probability of attacks while maintaining plausible deniability about responsibility.

  • “It's when a leader uses his platform to motivate and incite violence in a way in which the violence is much more likely to occur. But who does it and where it's done is utterly random.” (Kayyem, 05:30)

• Trump's Use of This Tactic:
  • Kayyem traces Trump’s pattern since at least 2018, noting post-election escalation to more direct signals with concrete dates (e.g., January 6th).

  • “He's now directing it, and he's directing it for a particular political purpose—that the election was not fair and not legitimate.” (Kayyem, 07:00)

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2. Shifting from Legal Abstractions to Counterterrorism ([08:24])

• Frustration with Legal Frameworks:

  • Lithwick voices exasperation at abstract First Amendment debates (“does this rise to incitement under Brandenburg”) being misplaced given the urgency and obvious real-world consequences.

  • “It is not…what we do in exigent circumstances... For me, the value of what you’re doing is, look, I’m just going to call this domestic terrorism.” (Lithwick, 09:08)

• Counterterrorism Framework:

  • Kayyem advocates treating the MAGA-aligned violent subgroup as a domestic terror threat—using criminal prosecution, financial isolation, de-platforming, and public shaming to contain it.

  • “Every single thing has to be thrown at him.” (Kayyem, 12:56)

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3. The Weaponization of Mockery and Irony ([13:10])

• “Comic” Aspects as Strategy:

  • Lithwick and Kayyem discuss how attackers used humor and absurdity (costumes, trolling) to deflect responsibility and minimize perceived danger.

  • “There’s a sort of Three Stooges, Keystone Cops hilarity … It is an attempt … to diffuse responsibility and also to say, this isn’t serious.” (Lithwick, 13:20)

• Violence Beneath the Surface:

  • Serious, organized violence was soon revealed, with attackers clubbing police and explicit coordination.
  • Kayyem points out Trump’s pattern of making calls to violence veiled as jokes:

    “What are his people hearing? They’re hearing, ‘Oh, that’s not a joke. We’re gonna, you know, kidnap the governor of Michigan.’” (Kayyem, 15:00)

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4. Responsibility & Duty to Protect ([20:06])

• Trump as “Spiritual and Operational Leader”:

  • Kayyem stops short of labeling Trump a terrorist, but squarely identifies him as the movement’s key enabler:

    “He’s the spiritual and operational leader of a domestic terrorism movement.” (Kayyem, 07:55)

  • She criticizes the lack of immediate action during the attack, calling it a “failure of the duty to protect.”

    “He seemed to be getting off on it … like watching it and people are trying to tell him, you need to do something, and he’s enjoying it.” (Kayyem, 21:14)

• Necessity of “Leadership Decapitation”:

  • Removing Trump and primary enablers from positions of influence is seen as essential to weaken the movement.

    “In terrorism or counterterrorism we have the terminology … ‘leadership decapitation’—if you actually want to end a terrorist movement, you start at the top.” (Kayyem, 18:35)

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5. Law Enforcement, the Military, and White Supremacy ([23:40])

• Infiltration of Institutions:

  • The involvement of military, police, and elected officials among the attackers mirrors historic patterns in domestic extremism (KKK, etc.).

    “This is something that gets rooted out by changes in leadership and firings … Better monitoring of officers' social media … providing a space where family and friends can remedy it.” (Kayyem, 24:09)

• Importance of Public, Institutional Shaming:

  • Successful counterterrorism relies not just on prosecution but also shaming and isolation of violent actors and enablers within organizations and parties.

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6. Internal Congressional Complicity and Republican Responsibility ([25:37])

• Potential Aiding from Congress:

  • Citing AOC's fears, Kayyem says any members proved to have helped the attackers should be expelled and prosecuted.

    “If anyone is known to have done that, not only are they expelled from Congress, but they also will be criminally prosecuted. That's just aiding and abetting a domestic terrorist organization for violent means.” (Kayyem, 25:54)

• Comparison with Arab-American Responses to Terrorism:

  • Kayyem draws a contrast between how Arab and Muslim communities rush to dissociate from terrorism, whereas Republican leaders often hesitate to forcefully disown the violent right-wing fringe.

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7. Who Gets Expelled, Who Gets Forgiven ([29:43])

• Three Categories:
  1. Trump, his family, and top enablers—must be isolated and deplatformed.
  2. The directly violent—prosecuted, fired, no leniency.
  3. The “radicalized”—needs de-radicalization, some social forgiveness, off-ramping.

  “We’ve got to figure out as a society the off-ramping potential … They do so because they realize it was a mistake, they were lied to.” (Kayyem, 32:57)

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8. Foreign Involvement and Financial Flows ([34:05])

• Russian and Other Foreign Interference:
  • Hostile countries are both aiding extremist groups and amplifying divisive narratives online.
  • Kayyem calls for a robust, multidisciplinary task force in the Biden administration, including Treasury, to choke off foreign funding and monitor extremist financing.

    “Organized terrorist groups are companies. They have to pay people … We have to … shut down the terrorist financing.” (Kayyem, 35:37)

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9. Public Will and Societal Response ([36:50])

• Is De-radicalization Possible?

  • Lithwick questions whether Americans are prepared for the difficult work of rebuilding unity and confronting the threat.
  • Kayyem argues that market and institutional forces (especially corporate and technological), motivated by self-interest, will drive changes and reduce tolerance for extremism.

    “Money matters, and the money is … they cannot be on the side of intolerance. Or if they are … Trump crossed a line to violence.” (Kayyem, 37:28)

• Imperfect but Necessary Steps:

  • The conversation ends with a call to recognize that ousting Trump is a precondition for improvement, even if it is not a panacea.

    “We were imperfect before. We need to rid ourselves of Trump. We just do. And that's a precondition towards a better America.” (Kayyem, 38:53)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Defining Stochastic Terrorism ([05:30])

  “Stochastic means random. So ... when a leader uses his platform to motivate and incite violence in a way in which the violence is much more likely to occur. But who does it and where it's done is utterly random.” — Juliette Kayyem

• On the Response Framework ([12:56])

  “This is probably the most spontaneous cross disciplinary ... counterterrorism effort in America since 9/11.” — Juliette Kayyem

• On Trump's Influence ([18:35])

  “He obviously unearthed something that was bigger than him, but boy, did he have a tremendous influence over it.” — Juliette Kayyem

• On Institutional Responsibility ([25:54])

  “If anyone is known to have done that, not only are they expelled from Congress, but they also will be criminally prosecuted. That's just aiding and abetting a domestic terrorist organization for violent means.” — Juliette Kayyem

• On Public Will ([37:28])

  “There's all these different pieces of society, maybe coordinated, maybe not, that working together can get us to a better place, not perfect.” — Juliette Kayyem

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Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:04 | Opening; context of the attack and ongoing violence fears | | 04:29 | Defining “stochastic terrorism” and application to Trump | | 08:24 | Frustration with free speech/incitement legal debates | | 12:56 | The spontaneous, multi-sector counterterrorism response | | 13:10 | The use of mockery/irony by attackers as a deliberate ploy| | 20:06 | Trump’s “operational leadership” and enjoyment of violence| | 23:40 | Concern about law enforcement/military involvement | | 25:37 | Responsiblity of Congress members and institutional complicity | | 29:43 | Who should be expelled, prosecuted, or de-radicalized | | 34:05 | Foreign involvement and need for financial disruption | | 36:50 | Questioning the public's capacity for collective action | | 39:12 | Closing thoughts and next steps |

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Tone and Language

The conversation is urgent, direct, and expert, with Kayyem balancing analytic detachment and personal engagement. Both speakers eschew euphemism; instead, they use clear, forceful language to call out violence, complicity, and the need for counterterrorism—not just legal—solutions.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode reframes the Capitol attack as an organized, leader-driven domestic terrorism threat, urging Americans to move beyond legal hair-splitting to a counterterrorism mindset that deploys all available tools—including law enforcement, financial pressure, deplatforming, public shaming, and de-radicalization—to mitigate and contain the danger. The episode closes on a note of pragmatic hope, dependent on the isolation of Trump and a multipronged societal response, acknowledging the challenge and necessity of this undertaking.

Transcript

[A]

We think, oh, if we just lower the temperature, let him move on. Go to Mar? A Lago. No, because he's now launched something that is very, very dangerous. And we have to view it as an organized element that is feeding off the big lie.

[B]

Hi, and welcome back to Amicus. This is Slate's podcast about the law and the courts, the supreme and the rule of law. It's been just over a week since the attempted insurrection at the US Capitol, the first such event since the war of 1812. And now we're preparing, at least talking about preparing for the possibility of yet more violence this weekend, next week around the inauguration. As we sat through the second impeachment of President Donald Trump in the House of Representatives this week and started to hear about the arrests and the first court appearances of some of the rioters, we also started to learn pretty granular details that suggested there was a lot more violence, a lot more planning, significant financial backing, that some of these looters were on the no fly list. And really intimations, only intimations now that some members of Congress might have in some way or other, aided this insurrection. It's really a lot to process and in some ways a different story even than we were telling a week ago. So if our show last week with Josh Geltzer tried to probe what it is that had happened and what to call it, we wanted this week to attempt to at least understand what can be done now going forward. Later on in the show, we are going to check in with Slate's very own Mark Joseph Stern about developments in the judiciary in North Carolina and Pennsylvania that do not bode well for democracy generally and voting rights going forward. We're also going to talk about the high court's decision to greenlight more federal executions this week and the first chilling abortion case of the Amy Coney Barrett era. That segment is available to our Slate plus members. And as always, we thank you for your support. And if you're not a member, you might want to know that Slate plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast. Bonus episodes of shows like this one, Slow Burn, Dear Prudence. And you will be supporting the work that we do here on amicus. It's only $35 for the first year. To sign, go to slate.com amicusplus on these big questions of the last two weeks. Accountability, justice, and the possibility of repair. My guest this week is Juliet Keim. Her work, I think, sits at the interstices of every one of these questions of terrorism, politics, law, justice, repair. She is a national security expert and former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security under Obama. She's the faculty chair of the Homeland Security Program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She's the author of Security An Unclassified Guide to Protecting Our Homeland and your Home. And she is a contributor at CNN and a prolific, thoughtful tweeter. So, Juliet, first of all, welcome.

[A]

Oh, I'm so thrilled to be here. I can't tell you. I feel like I'm in the Slate family now.

[B]

I'm so happy you get to I think you get to start us off on this road that I've been on a little bit in the last couple of weeks, which is the welcome other people who said this was going to be serious, because I think you were one of the people who was not saying in November and December, we'll just get ourselves to the election, we'll get ourselves to the transition, we'll get ourselves to the new inauguration and this is over. You've been really clear, I think, in print and all over the place that this had the possibility to go upside down. I think I want to just start by asking you about this word, stochastic terrorism, because you've been saying it and saying it, and I feel like I wrote it this week. And then one of my dear friends was like, what the hell does that mean? Can you explain what it means?

[A]

I know it doesn't roll off the tongue. I know we need a first of all, hi, everyone, we're going to be fine. Fine enough. Fine. Ish. So I think the first time I used it publicly was in 2018. I had been looking at what Trump was doing, and I think inciting violence was not the right terminology because it was a particular type of violence. It was a violence that was directed towards political gain. Now, that could be whether it's against a mayor he doesn't like or a governor he doesn't like, or people he doesn't like, or media personalities, as he's often want to do. And the means that he did it is stochastic terrorism. Stochastic means random. So I'll explain the terminology. It's a way of thinking about violence. And it's when a leader uses his platform to motivate and incite violence in a way in which the violence is much more likely to occur. But who does it and where it's done is utterly random. So after a Trump speech, is it more likely someone might do something or a Trump tweet and he's able to do this or was able to do this by plausible deniability that the incitement was sufficiently vague. It wasn't go to Fifth Avenue and Central park west and do this, you person. Right. It was things like liberate Michigan and things like what he said about the proud boys that they viewed as a victory at the debate. And so that language would incite. And you could see the cases over the four years, the white supremacy or the attempted terrorism cases, that almost all of them were deep followers of Trump and his Twitter feeds and all the craziness online. So that's the terminology. I wanted people to think about what he was doing. But I will say after the election, and this is when normally calm self me started to use the platforms I could use to say something has changed in which is he's now directing it, and he's directing it for a particular political purpose, which is that the election was not fair and not legitimate. And it gets picked up by all of his, you know, supportive senators and Fox News. And then around Christmas time is when I started doing red code, which was, he's picked a date, which is January 6th, and that was gonna be it. So that, to me now is directed. And the idea that for whatever reason, people much smarter than me and much deeper into the weeds of the intelligence weren't picking up on this seems political in nature, that because the president for four years had said, you cannot look at this kind of terrorism, and that they weren't ready. But it's organized, it's coordinated, it has its leader. I want to say one more thing. I'm really careful about two things. I'm not calling all of Trump's supporters terrorists. There's a violent element that is a domestic terrorist element that is organized. And we saw it in the Capitol. I saw it that day. I was on air that day, and I saw military formation. You could see it going up the staircase. When men are able to walk up a staircase, crowded. That is a military formation. They know how to do that. That they walked up a staircase that was quite crowded in singular line. They know exactly what they were doing. The other thing is, I'm not. I don't feel comfortable calling Trump a terrorist just because I think then. Then we're going to get into that debate. I just. But it's important to say that he's the spiritual and operational leader of a domestic terrorism movement. And that's sort of where we've landed. And that's what I've been writing and talking about. And I. And, And I did it not for name calling, but because now I think, can we think about the prisms of counterterrorism as a solution?

[B]

And that really is why it was you I wanted to talk about. I was just saying to my producer, I've been just almost choked by the volume of very, very abstract legal thinking about incitement and the First Amendment. And does this rise to incitement under Brandenburg, which is a ridiculous set of questions when you are, in fact, as you said, willing to look at this in a terrorist FR frame. We don't sit around and say, oh, was there a face to face encounter? This is doctrine that is already 100 years old, that is made doubly, in my sense, obsolete by the existence of the Internet. And then we're going to sit around and workshop for five years what speech test we can meet. It is not, it seems to me, what we do in exigent circumstances. And so for me, the value of what you're doing is, look, I'm just going to call this domestic terrorism. We can have a conversation about what, you know, Trump's responsibility is, but we are not going to sit around and talk about free speech for the next three months. That's.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think that's exactly right. I mean, part of it is I'm a sort of half glass full person. And part of it was everything seems so overwhelming right now. The lack of a framework to try to just understand it, whether it's for me or even my kids, as you're trying to explain what's going on was sort of bothering me. And I will say on a personal level, I had been using stochastic terrorism. And exactly like what you're saying in terms of social media, that stochastic terrorism also gets us out of the lone wolf framework. In other words, there's no more lone wolves. I mean, this is amplified. They all know each other. They're all communicating on these horrible website so that you can start to see it as something organized, not as, oh, a bunch of random guys funnily dressed are showing up in Congress. And how did they get in? I know exactly how they got in. They planned on getting in and then we had a. Not a very effective defensive posture. So that is, I think, what's important so that you get to the counterterrorism framework about, okay, what can we do? Knowing now that this is an organized domestic threat, all of a sudden, well, then the tools become more obvious. I mean, you do all the things that you would otherwise do with any criminal organization. You prosecute, you investigate. All of these investigations now are not Only punishment, they're preventative because we still have the inauguration coming up. They are to say to people who might be curious or lookie, lose, don't do this. And I think that's gonna be effective. You, you cut off the money. And so I do think what the private sector is doing is fantastic. You de platform the leader. So thank you Twitter, Facebook for this short moment in time. We'll get back to you, isolate you, shame you use every political gesture you can. So I don't view the impeachment through the lens of anything, but he has to leave here isolated because as a leader of a terrorist organization, he can't be seen to be a winner. So the whole sort of unity, love and let's just move on is actually makes us less safe. And so I just wanted to make that point that we think, oh, if we just lower the temperature, let him move on, go to Mar a Lago. No, because he's now launched something that is very, very dangerous. And we have to view it as an organized element that is feeding off the big lie, which is feeding off of the belief that he and others, people who should know better, have promulgated about the election. And so, you know, crushed is a little strong, but you just want to weaken him because it's now about recruitment, it's about whether we can contain this, prosecute those who've been violent, off ramp those who may want to off ramp. I mean there's something to shame and to them realizing what's going on. And we've got a lot of people in that camp and making sure he can't recruit. And so he needs to be a loser, just needs to be a loser. And so that's sort of the framework that every tool. So I think yesterday dawned on me and I tweeted out, this is probably the most spontaneous cross disciplinary, you know, throw everything at the wall counterterrorism effort in America since 911 because it's not coordinated in the way that we would think about, you know, 911 working with states and you know, and the military, this is the Joint Chiefs, you know, puts out a release that makes it clear that he's isolated. And then Twitter takes him off and, and Deutsche bank says, we're not doing business with you anymore. All of it, all, every single thing has to be thrown at him.

[B]

One thing before we leave the world of terrorism that I wanted to ask you about, that I've been really mindful of, is that the first takes on January six were the comic takes, right? We got the guy in the furry vest and the funny horns and all the funny shirts and the funny photos. And there's a sort of Three Stooges, Keystone Cops hilarity. And that was the frame. It's funny. Josh Geltzer was on the show last week, and he said, they're very deliberate about looking goofy. It is an attempt to, through irony, through trolling, through saying, oh, I'm just kidding, to diffuse responsibility and also to say, this isn't serious. I wonder, again, as a terrorism person, what does it mean to you that it really took five, six days until we started seeing the footage of people quite literally clubbing someone, hitting someone with a flagpole, trying to execute each other? The audio we're Hearing now from D.C. police who are fearing for their lives. What is it? Is it new to you? Is this an old game that you make it seem? I mean, again, it's such a Trump move to say, oh, I was just kidding, right? When I said beat the crap out of reporters. It's a joke, right?

[A]

It's the stochastic nature of it. This is what Trump was so good at. He tweets out Free Michigan. And so rational people like you and me go, does he mean what I think he means? What does he mean by Free Michigan? And then, you know, his press secretary says, oh, he. He just meant the mass. Like, whatever. Right, but what are his people hearing?

[B]

Right?

[A]

So what are they hearing? They're hearing, oh, that's not a joke. We're gonna, you know, kidnap the governor of Michigan. And so this idea of mockery, of violence, and I think it's the diabolicalness of Trump. And I know there's psychological theories about him, I get it, but it's this lack of being able to have a repulsion to violence, and that's who these guys are. So it's all a joke. We're just killing people. I mean, even the building of the noose, it's like. It's both theater, but it's terrify. I hate to go to this scene. Cause it's not. I have to be so careful because everyone will accuse me of things. But remember Clockwork Orange? The most horrible scene, right? The rape and murder scene where he comes in in a clown face. And I mean, it had that feel, right? I mean, it had that sort of, who are these bozos? But they're not. I mean, as we're now seeing also from the platforms, they were talking about dates, they were talking about training. They. They. They know exactly places to go. CNN was reporting this week that there's some evidence that a lot of them were down, you know, with Trump. When he finished speaking, they then left to go get a bunch of stuff because they couldn't take it as close to Trump as they wanted to, whether it was the bats or the ties and stuff. Right. So then they. They. They're told to come to congregate pre battle. They hear the general's speech, which was take the Hill. Right. And the only funny part of that was when he said he was gonna go with them, which, you know, of course, he wasn't inciting language from various speakers. And then they do it. It's just. It's like we're sort of out of the realm of what did he mean? I mean, to me, and I think the fact that it's taken a while to see the gravity of it, including his own vice president's life being under some threat, is because I think we've always failed to be able to really come to terms with the depravity and enjoyment of violence that our president clearly, clearly has mastered. Right. And I think even me writing this column, which was a lot further than I had written before about him. I know what I say to my friends. I even tweet it. But. But to write it down that you're your president, he's my President until the 20th, is the spiritual and operational mastermind of a domestic terrorism movement. It's hard. I mean, we're all emotional. It's hard. And the depravity of who he is. I think I should compliment everyone for not being able to go there with him, but it's just. It's there and now. And now he must be treated like the terrorist leader that he is. And in terrorism or counterterrorism, we have the terminology, and I hate it, but it's just. It's just a. It's just a way to describe it, and obviously not literal, which is leadership decapitation, which is if you actually want to end a terrorist movement, you start at the top. Now, there are people who disagree with that, and I get it. There's. There's debates in counterterrorism theory, as there are in any theory. But it seems odd to me to for years argue that Trump is inciting terrorism and violence, and then to think that his departure from the scene won't have some beneficial consequences. Right, of course it will. Because what these guys have fed off of is not only social media, is not only an ideology, which is not just white supremacy. It's like a weird combination. It's QAnon it's everything. Right. But they have fed off of being nurtured and not shamed. And the Ivanka not being able to join the golf club is an awesome shaming, because the idea that there's no consequences for the next person who does this. Right. Life after.

[B]

We will be right back. It raises for me, too, Juliet, this question of, you know, we're starting to see at the very end of this week, the first court appearances for some of the folks whose attorneys are standing up and saying, oh, yeah, no, that text where he said he wanted to shoot Nancy Pelosi, kill Muriel Bowser. Those were jokes. So there is a way in which. And I guess this is what we've said about Trump all along, right? Boys will be boys. This is just juvenile. Nobody thought of the nine, 11 attackers. Boys will be boys. They're just kind of wacky boogaloo guys. So there is a level of that same problem. Problem we had after Charlottesville, we had again last week, which is bunch of white guys dress up and say they're being funny. We just really do not have the cognitive, the ability to torque on a dime and say, no, that actually is domestic terrorism. That's Tim McVeigh. That's not funny.

[A]

Yeah. Whatever they're charged with, that's. I let the. I don't. To be honest, I don't follow the laws. I know there's a big debate about domestic terrorism laws. I can't. I'm sort of agnostic because I do worry about it being used by future presidents against causes that I believe in unjustifiably. But what's interesting in the court, in the indictment so far, and in the investigation so far, every single one is they read what Trump was saying. They followed what he was saying. They heard what he was saying. Look at his. Look at his tweets. Between the 25th and the 1st. This is when I started to be like, yeah, so, you know, the nature. I started to be, like, nervous. It's the nature of the pandemic that I was like, you know, online too much during that week. I would have normally been somewhere warm, not paying attention. But this is like, you know, you're starting to see, like, this is something that's real. And, you know, I mean, in the middle of this, we just learned he's talking to Steve Bannon again. Are you telling me Steve Bannon doesn't know what's going on in this stew of. Of. Of hatred? Of course he does.

[B]

He's.

[A]

He's built it right? I mean, this is what These guys do. And in fact. But let's just say if I knew, and Trump seems to be online four times as much as I am Trump, Trump would have known what he was building. And if that's not bad enough, the one part of the impeachment that I think they missed, I think it's good that they did it quick, fast, get over with is I do think, oh, there's my dog. I do think that one of the articles, or an article now that we know would have been failure of the duty to protect. That the stories of what he was doing in that four to five hours. I mean, basically, he seemed to be getting. Honestly, he seemed to be getting off on it, like in a weird. Like he's like watching it and people are trying to tell him, you need to do something, and he's like, enjoying it and the music's playing. I mean, it is clockwork Orangish. I mean, it is like this like sort of perverse scene where these disgusting people are watching something a mile away, have every capacity to make it end, and are sort of are enjoying it. And I think that sort of duty to protect, if nothing else, it's the duty to protect.

[B]

So you've said it that I think whatever happens. And I've heard you say it elsewhere, look, 25th amendment, impeach him. Article three of the 14th amendment, pick your poison.

[A]

My daughter's like all of them, you know.

[B]

Yeah. No, all of them. Yes. Yes. And right. We are in that world.

[A]

We're in that world.

[B]

Isolate him. Deplatform. Okay, now we've got this ancillary question which is again, as part of the. These guys are serious. We've seen in the last couple of days, people charged. Ex Navy, former firefighter, member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, off duty cops. Juliet. One of the things that. But while I completely stipulate, cut it off at the head, the degree of leeching into the armed forces, into law enforcement, into the institutions that are meant to protect us. And I'm not even going to start yet. The question about members of Congress, that's my next question. But what do you think about when you're again thinking about this as a counterterrorism expert, about the fact that these are not a bunch of crackpots, these are people who, when they put their uniforms on, swear oaths to protect.

[A]

Yeah, no, and that's true. And I think this is Adam in the Atlantis.

[B]

Serwer.

[A]

Serwer.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Made it clear in one of his columns, the myth of the poor impoverished guy is Just wrong. And if you look at their bios, as you said, some of them come from law enforcement. This was true of certainly Al Qaeda. Less so of isis, but this was certainly true of Al Qaeda. This was not, you know, Muhammad Atta, all of them, bin Laden, they came from resources. And so what to make of it? So part of it is this is, you know, where history helps is this was true at the kkk. I mean, this is, this is something that gets rooted out by changes in leadership and firings. And one hopes that the unions will finally wake up to this because there was a freaking disaster on most of the this stuff. Better monitoring of officers, social media, because that seems to me to be fair game. And then also providing a space where family and friends can. I don't want to sound like Eastern Europe or East Germany, but can remedy it. So what's interesting about the investigations going on now is, I mean, the FBI said out loud, said, it's your family and friends, people, that's who's giving you up. They're seeing your picture and they're saying, yeah, that's Freddie, who was fine until six months ago, until he started going into the QAnon hole. So we need to find lots of ways where this can be rooted out, but it can be not perfectly. The lack of shaming of this movement and nurturing by the President is also responsible. So one would hope that as this gets shamed and isolated and the worst of the worst get prosecuted and the slight worst of the worst decide that this isn't their profession or get rooted out by law enforcement or military, that this can change. So unfortunately, it's a reality.

[B]

And that leads me to the follow up that I just promised, which is, what do we do when AOC says, I think there were people in Congress who would have aided and abetted in my murder, in my kidnapping?

[A]

I think she's absolutely right. And I think a bunch of congressmen and women have signed a letter because there were tours going on. And during the pandemic, there shouldn't be any tours going on about who was in the building and who let them in. So if anyone is known to have done that, not only are they expelled from Congress, but they also will be criminally prosecuted. That's just aiding and abetting a domestic terrorist organization for violent means. You know, I don't know the specifics. This is a little bit of the joke factor of it is, is that, you know, is there a gap between, you know, what they thought was going to happen and what ended up happening? Well, Too bad. Like, that's your own immaturity. I will say one thing. I was talking to, I do a lot of advising and stuff, and I was talking to a congresswoman yesterday on another disaster, which is Covid, and she's in leadership. She was not there. And I said, how is everyone? And she said, you know, people are shaken up. She's like, but you, you talked to my minority caucus. They thought they were going to be killed. This is what the black, African American law enforcement officers are saying as well, that, that you could just see it, you know, in their, in their eyes that this was, you know, that they were prey. And one of the things that, you know, I always want to say is, as you know, I'm Lebanese American, Arab American, and I've been in counterterrorism, and it's, you know, it's an interesting place to be. I'm not, I should say I'm not Muslim. I only say that because Lebanese Christians are different than Lebanese Muslims, but obviously identify with the community and some of the racism and discrimination that has occurred over the years. And I'll tell you one thing, when, when Arabs and Muslims blow things up, literally, like every Arab in, in America, like, literally signs a letter saying, they're not us, right? They are not us. And whatever they say they are, they are not us. We don't try to understand them. We don't try to get them. We don't try to make a bigger issue about the Israeli Palestinian conflict around it. We literally say, they are not us. And my, I mean, such wimps by the Republicans and some are starting to do it now. You got to expel that violent streak if you want the policies that used to exist in the Republican Party, which they don't have anymore. But if they want to form something after Trump, if you want people to view you not as a terrorist organization, and it's their burden, it's not my burden for unity. And this is where I do sound not like me. I mean, this is what the amazing thing, since last Wednesday, I was like, I'm like the one who's like, oh, you know, things aren't so bad. You know what? They aren't. If you, you know, if you understand, I'm not. We're not doing unity right now. This is not this. It's their obligation to fix their party. And if they can't, then this will continue. I mean, they need to know that.

[B]

Now let's return to our conversation with Juliette Kayam, national security expert and former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security under Barack Obama. She is the faculty chair of the Homeland Security Program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. What do you do about this nexus between the Republicans who were willing to, and in fact did vote to overturn election results and what happened, and the nexus between members of Congress who even this week, after everything had happened, insisting on bringing a gun onto the floor, insisting on not wearing masks. In other words, you're talking about aggregated violence. All of that is violence. And I want you to parse for me who gets expelled.

[A]

As I said to you, it's been a hard week and I've had a lot of anger towards me from the more violent elements of MAGA and targeted threats and things like that. If it ever happens to you, I don't take this as a joke. I take it seriously. So I do involve law enforcement just to make sure that these folks are, you know, not next door, let's just put it that way. So, okay, so I have three categories. So I have Trump, the family, the enablers, and the liars. And whatever we can do cumulatively. And you're starting to see it, even with funding to some of them, they need to be isolated, crushed, whatever the right word is. What's interesting is you're starting to see some of the senators who don't want to be with Ted Cruz starting now to back off. You saw some of them back off the night of the. You'll see more who had created the lie, because what we have to understand is the lie that is animating the violence. Trump will never say it's a lie. So that's why he has to be in, you know, crude ways. What I said, you know, isolated or silenced. Right. And I would be for his permanent banning. Now, of course, I'm not a First Amendment lawyer and I'm not a technology person. And I know they all fight about that stuff. But, like, just from my little perch, a private company has no obligation to hand a megaphone to a person who inspires terrorism. That just seems to me to be obvious. So that's your first grouping. And I. And this is where my. I'm a half glass full person. I think you will start to see that. And whether Romney or others are able to begin a new dialogue, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, the party may be 25% captured. The second grouping is the violent people, people who would take arms, your normal law enforcement techniques against them. No leniency, nothing. And if private employers want to take action, I'm not going to claim that they had a first amendment right. So if you're hearing about people getting fired, you know, I'll take that case on behalf of the company. And then third is, I think, the bigger problem, which is obviously if you view him as a terrorist leader, a cult leader, I'm not saying I'm forgiving them, but we gotta figure out as a society the off ramping potential. And this is where terrorism studies come into play as well. One is recruitment, as I said before, will get harder as he's isolated as their views as losers. There'll be pockets of violence. We're talking about risk minimization now, right? We are under threat. We are still on the tactical phase of a counterterrorism effort. So we're talking about minimizing risk. We're not going to get everyone and everything. So of that group though, you want to stop recruitment so it doesn't get bigger. And then you want to figure out, okay, what can I learn from other terrorist organizations? Well, people do become de. Radicalized. They do. They. It's hard for us to imagine. And they do so because they realize that it was a mistake, they were lied to and they realized this. So think about the ISIS brides and the ISIS wives. You know, they're disaffected. They have no choices in their life. Conservative Muslim woman, she's getting online the promises of a Rolls Royce and a handsome husband and being away from dad, right? So she goes, right? And then she's a pawned off wife amongst, you know, eight ISIS fighters, right? Wife, you know, sex slave. Right? So she comes back or if she makes it or gets released, her testimonials are really important. She made an error, a major one. Others get radicalized and they start fighting. So there's. Each per. Each grouping is going to be different. But I do think that there's we, you and me now, where I think it's their problem over there. I mean, we got to figure out a way in which we can, you know, shun and isolate and even mock or de platform some of this stuff. But then, you know, some semblance of forgiveness, of understanding. And then maybe we can excise this thing, this, this man from our, from our focus. He'll always be around. He obviously unearthed something that was bigger than him, but boy, did he have a tremendous influence over it.

[B]

One other thing that's been chomping on me, Juliet, that I, I bring to your doorstep is what do we do about the fact that underlying all of what has happened in the last week, we know there was A massive Russian hack. We know as of this week, somebody transferred, what, half a million dollars of foreign money, right? Bitcoin.

[A]

Bitcoin money to these guys.

[B]

To these guys. I want to know if you put on your international terror hat, how vulnerable. I feel almost more vulnerable to the fact that there is a circus of foreign involvement or potential foreign involvement that we know nothing about, simmering under what feels like an existential domestic crisis. And I guess I would love to hear just your thought on how seriously we are taking that, how seriously we should be taking that.

[A]

Yeah, no, we should, Absolutely. And this is where I think if I were Biden, I would. Would set up a task force. I would do an overall sort of, you know, white supremacy, you know, radicalization, focus on domestic threats, not international. And you definitely would want a Treasury component. You're starting to see this in some of the indictments. This is how you know about the bitcoin stuff. So there's no question of the foreign involvement. It's occurring in two ways. So one is the clear aiding and abetting. So the Russians aren't stupid. They're looking at these websites. They know who the individuals are. They know how to get money to them, and they. They're seeing exactly what I saw. But even better because they're spending more time on it, which is, let's get money to people who are going to D.C. on the six. The other way that they're successful, but this is where the Chinese and others are also playing is in amplifying the hate that already existed. They're doing this with vaccinations. They're doing. They did it in the campaign and they're targeting it. So we have to get smarter about that. I have confidence that the teams coming in for Biden on DOJ and treasury side will do that. But this is part of the isolation is if you. We do this with terrorist groups, right, is you shut down the terrorist financing. Organized terrorist groups are companies. They have to pay people. And I mean, there's like, famous or infamous documentation out of the Al Qaeda caves, you know, that, like, half of what bin Laden was doing was trying to moderate conflicts between people about how much they were getting paid. Like, I mean, so in some ways I just think, like, we have to. Just like, this is doable.

[B]

Before you go, tell me, is there a public will, Is there a public will even on the side of the country that's thinking in terms of how to respond to this, to do the kinds of things? I mean, first of all, to frame it the way you're framing it. Let's just talk about this like it's domestic terror. This is Timothy McVeigh. We're not going to have a conversation about incitement. Is there a public will to do the work you're describing of de radicalization, of half forgiveness, half draconian punishment? I mean, it just seems a million miles from here. Juliet.

[A]

No, no. I mean, first of all, I mean, okay, now here's the crude side of me. Money matters, and the money is companies are smart. They see, especially global companies. They cannot be on the side of intolerance. Or if they are on the side of intolerance, Trump cross a line to violence. So don't view it as like there's going to be a wise man who makes everyone better. The way to look at it is there's all these different pieces of society, maybe coordinated, maybe not, that working together can get us to a better place, not perfect. I mean, the thing that's important to remember is we were quite imperfect before this, and I think it's important to remember that. But that imperfection did not involve a president who incites terror and those who would follow him. So I do think, you know, between the nonprofit, the civic, the political, the monetary, the technology, a combination of things, things will move us. And I. And I. So I love some of these efforts that have pushed companies to not pay money or not support candidates that were against democracy, and that's essentially what they were. And so, yeah, it's painful to admit that only money and not morality move them, but you move people in ways that you can. So we were imperfect before. We need to rid ourselves of Trump. We just do. And that's a precondition towards a better America. It doesn't solve the problem, but it's a precondition. So let's start there.

[B]

Juliette Kiam is national security expert, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. She's faculty chair of the Homeland Security Program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and author of Security An Unclassified Guide to Protecting our homeland and your home. She's also always a voice of sanity in the insane moments. Juliet, thank you so, so much. I really needed this clarity this week probably more than ever. Thanks.

[A]

Oh, thank you.

[B]

And that is a wrap for this episode of Amicus. Thank you so much for listening in, and thank you so much for your letters and for your questions. You can keep in [e-mail] you can always find us at facebook.com amicuspodcast Today's show was produced by Sara Burningham. We had research help from Daniel Maloof. Gabriel Roth is editorial director. Alicia Montgomery is executive producer. June Thomas is senior managing producer of Slate podcasts. Be healthy, take care of yourselves and of one another, and we will be back with another episode of Amicus in two weeks.