The Department of Homeland Security in 2016 formally classified the actions of the anarchist group Antifa as “domestic terrorist violence,” Politico reported.
Federal authorities have been warning state and local officials of Antifa’s increasingly dangerous tactics — including attacks on the police — since early 2016 but were widely ignored long before Charlottesville and while Barack Obama was still president, Politico reported.
Further, DHS and FBI were worried that Antifa might resort to terrorist bombings at one or both of the political conventions last summer, Politico reported.
Though it reportedly exists without a leader or official chain of command, Antifa members are connected and operate much like terrorist cells do, and in April of 2016, a joint report by the FBI and DHS members spend weeks planning for violence at selected events, Politico reported.
And the escalation had been on the feds’ radar long before the rest of the country — including the media