AG Garland: Terror Risk in US Surges Since Oct. 7

(Getty Images)

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Tuesday the threat level has increased “enormously” for a terrorist attack on U.S. soil after Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists massacred 1,200 Israeli civilians and took about 250 hostage on Oct. 7.

“I am worried about the possibility of a terrorist attack in the country after Oct. 7,” Garland said Tuesday in a House Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the Department of Justice (DOJ). “The threat level for us has gone up enormously. Every morning, we worry about this question. We try to track anyone who might be trying to hurt the country.

“Of course, this is a priority, a major priority for the Justice Department.”

Garland has been under fire from House Republicans who are seeking to hold him in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over audio recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden and his ghostwriter Matt Zwonitzer during Hur’s investigation of Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.

The Judiciary Committee and Committee on Oversight and Accountability voted in May to hold Garland in contempt, and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., reportedly said a vote before the full House will come soon.

Garland also responded to a rise in antisemitism across the U.S. when questioned by Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., who talked about a synagogue in her district that has received threats, including on in early May in which she said included statements like, “Jews don’t deserve to live. Jews didn’t deserve to be on this Earth. I’m going to kill the Jews. I’m coming to the temple to kill all the Jews and the children.”

Kevin Dunlow, 62, of Huntington Beach, California, was arrested and charged in connection with the statements, according to a DOJ news release, and he also was charged with making a false bomb threat to the sheriff’s office in Wake County, North Carolina.

“Since Oct. 7, there has been a terrible explosion in antisemitic threats, also anti-Arab, anti-Muslim threats in this country that make all these communities afraid,” Garland said. “We regard it as an important element of our civil rights work to deter and to investigate and to prosecute and to stop these threats.”