DHS/TERRORISM/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Weeks before a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to three deaths and 19 injuries, the Trump administration revoked a grant to Life After Hate, a group that works to de-radicalize neo-Nazis.
The Department of Homeland Security had awarded the group $400,000 as part of its Countering Violent Extremism program in January, just days before former President Barack Obama left office. It was the only group selected for a grant that focused exclusively on fighting white supremacy. But the grant money was not immediately disbursed…
[Katherine] Gorka [Trump Aide] told Selim and Gersten she didn’t agree with the Obama administration’s approach to countering violent extremism ― particularly the way the administration had described the threat of extremism, according to Nate Snyder, an Obama administration DHS counterterrorism official who was an adviser on Countering Violent Extremism efforts and was given a readout of the meeting. The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized the previous administration for avoiding terms like ‘radical Islam’ out of concern that it could alienate Muslims in the U.S. and abroad…
Once Trump entered the White House in January, the office of then-DHS Secretary John Kelly ordered a full review of the Countering Violent Extremism program. Kelly’s office wanted to re-vet the groups receiving a portion of the $10 million Congress had appropriated for the program — even though DHS had already publicly announced the grant recipients.
While that review was underway, DHS and the FBI warned in an internal intelligence bulletin of the threat posed by white supremacy. White supremacists ‘were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016 … more than any other domestic extremist movement,’ the two agencies wrote in a May 10 document obtained by Foreign Policy . Members of the white supremacist movement ‘likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year,’ they concluded… DHS did not directly respond to a questions about why it cut funding for de-radicalizing neo-Nazis, and whether it views white supremacy as an extremist threat.”
-Jessica Schulberg, “Controversial Trump Aide Katharine Gorka Helped End Funding For Group That Fights White Supremacy,” Huffington Post online, Aug. 15, 2017 08:34am