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A review of FBI documents from its surveillance of the Black Lives Matter collective reveals that the agency believed that “Black Identity extremists” would target the police and the 2016 presidential conventions, Al Jazeera reported.

READ MORE: Lawsuit Against FBI, DHS Seeks Information On Surveillance Of Black Lives Matter Protesters

“The FBI assesses it is very likely Black Identity Extremists perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will likely serve as justification for such violence,” an Aug. 3 report from the agency stated.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI had been monitoring BLM protests and circulated information in 2016 to law enforcement agencies about possible threats, according to internal documents obtained through a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Color of Change and shared with Al Jazeera. Those documents revealed that the FBI warned of attacks against law enforcement by Black radical groups after Micah Xavier Johnson shot and killed five Dallas police officers in July 2016—even though the agency said Johnson acted alone and had no ties to BLM. The FBI also feared that that Black radical groups would launch violent attacks on the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in 2016.

READ MORE: Sessions Claims Ignorance On FBI ‘Black Extremists’ Report

The FBI produced a 12-page report in August about groups that the agency views as Black extremists. Attorney General Jeff Sessions denied seeing the report when asked by Black lawmakers at a congressional hearing. That denial prompted Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) to ask him whether the FBI produced a similar report on the Ku Klux Klan and other White supremacist groups. Sessions said he is unaware of a similar study about White hate groups. There has also been perplexity and outrage by the agency’s use of the term “Black supremacist extremist” to describe BLM.

SOURCE:  Al Jazeera

SEE ALSO:

All Lives Splatter: Sheriff Apologizes For Anti-BLM Facebook Meme

Officer Sues Black Lives Matter Activists Over Baton Rouge Police Shooting

FBI Feared Wave Of Violence From ‘Black Identity Extremists’, Report Reveals  was originally published on newsone.com