Harvard's Kayyem Connects Election Lies To White Supremacy, Reflects on Wray Testimony

Harvard professor and national security expert Juliette Kayyem returned to Boston Public Radio on Wednesday, offering her takeaways from Senate testimony given Tuesday by FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Wray, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, spent hours responding to questions about the FBI’s investigations into the Jan. 6 insurrection, and warned that the threat of domestic terrorism has only increased in the weeks following the attack.

“Wray was very, very clear that the violent element the FBI is investigating is fundamentally a white, racist, violent movement,” Kayyem noted, adding “that is actually really important to hear,” amid conspiracy theories about leftist involvement in the Jan. 6 riots, and overstated anxiety about the impact of the QAnon conspiracy on U.S. security.

The CNN analyst went on to draw connections between the white supremacists storming the Capitol, and the racist foundation of Trump’s lies about tampered election results in states like Arizona and Georgia.

“The reality is that the GOP isn’t questioning the vote, it’s just questioning African American and Hispanic votes,” she said. “It’s Arizona and Georgia, that’s what’s happening here.”

“Without saying it directly, that is exactly what Wray was focusing the FBI efforts on,” she added, describing those efforts as stopping the “violent white supremacy that is being nurtured by the GOP ‘Stop the Steal’ efforts, as well as so much leadership unwilling to accept that Biden’s president.”

Juliette Kayyem is an analyst for CNN, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.