Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the violent attack Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which a white supremacist allegedly drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters at a white supremacists rally, fits the Department of Justice’s definition of domestic terrorism.
“It does meet the definition of domestic terrorism in our statute. We’re pursuing it with the Department of Justice in every way we can make it, make a case,” he said, appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday morning. “You can be sure we will charge and advance the investigation toward the most serious charges that can be brought, because this is an unequivocally unacceptable and evil attack that cannot be accepted in America, so absolutely that is a factor that we will be looking at.”
Sessions made the rounds on news shows Monday morning, defending the President for his initial statements about the incident, amid criticism that President Donald Trump didn’t go far enough to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups.
Trump’s initial comments condemned violence on “many sides,” but didn’t explicitly call out the white nationalist groups.