The Department of Homeland Security Intelligence Enterprise Field Operations Division issued an analysis report warning of a “heightened physical threat” environment ahead of the January 5 Georgia Senate runoff election, which will decide the fate of the U.S. Senate.
GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Purdue will face off against Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively. The election will determine who controls the Senate—Republicans need to win one of the seats to keep their majority. A loss of one of the seats would result in a 50-50 tie in the Senate, with Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker. Needless to say, Democrats controlling all three branches of government would make it easier for Joe Biden to implement his radical agenda. Some two million Georgia voters have already cast their ballots in the contentious election.
The Dec. 22 unclassified DHS report, marked “law enforcement sensitive,” warns of “physical” threats over the course of the election cycle, “which may drive ideologically motivated violence or threats of violence.”
According to the report, “violent extremists or other actors could quickly mobilize to violence or generate violent disruptions or otherwise lawful protests in response to a range of issues, including possible disputes over the results of the U.S. presidential election.”
DHS said that violence could occur due to a “confluence of flashpoints, some of which sparked ideologically motived violence or threats of such violence in Georgia and nationwide during 2020.” The agency acknowledged that it does not have “any specific credible reporting indicating a threat specifically… and only fragmentary and limited reporting of election-related violence,” but said it has “high confidence” in their judgment “that incidents similar to those observed during the 2020 presidential election season—including unattributed suspicious scanning or probing of cyber networks, indirect impacts from ransomware and other cybercrime, or network disruptions not associated with malicious activity—likely could occur again during the runoff election.”
In addition, DHS said they have “high confidence” that foreign threat actors see the national significance of Georgia’s election “to be an opportunity to use social media and other influence tactics focused om the state,” based on “a review of foreign state-run media’s coverage of the runoff election as well as previous US and foreign open source reporting indicating Iran, Russia, and other nation-state actors’ continued willingness to generate misleading or false information on sensitive and divisive topics in attempts to influence US voters and undermine confidence in democratic processes.”
“Incidents of violence in or near the state capitol, courts, and other symbolic political institutions — similar to dozens of incidents observed nationwide—could also negatively impact elected officials or election workers in Georgia over the course of the election cycle,” the report continued. “We further judge that violent extremists or other actors could quickly mobilize to violence or generate violent disruptions of otherwise lawful protests in response to. range of issues, including possible disputes over the results of the US presidential election.”
Republican National Committee Senior Communication Advisor Paris Dennard told Fox News that Georgia voters “deserve to have an election that is safe and secure.”
“There should not be violence on the streets of America, and what we have to remember is that the American people need to hear from Democrats in office, to tell them not to have violence on the streets. So we need to hear from Stacey Abrams, we need to be hearing from Speaker Pelosi, we need to hear from Joe Biden, we need to hear from Senator Harris. All these people need to come out and say that we need a safe election.”
Dennard wants Democratic leaders to send a message to violent extremists in their party: “Stay home, do not have acts of violence, because we are better than that in America.”
Dennard said Democrats are not discussing the DHS report because it “doesn’t fit their narrative.”
“We’ve seen violence in Georgia. We’ve seen buildings burned down in Atlanta, Georgia, specifically. And if this is something that’s important to these Democrats, they should come out and say it very definitively,” he added.
“People want to vote, and vote peacefully, and we don’t need these groups to come in and agitate and destroy property.”
DHS Georgia Runoff Warning by PJ Media on Scribd
