Are Tesla attacks considered domestic terrorism? : NPR

The Department of Justice announced charges Thursday against three people it says are allegedly responsible for violent incidents targeting Elon Musk’s Tesla cars, showrooms and charging stations across the country.

The Justice Department says three people — in Charleston, S.C., Loveland, Colo., and Salem, Ore. — are facing criminal charges that carry a minimum penalty of five years and up to 20 years in prison for a range of violent acts. They include using Molotov cocktails to set fire to Tesla cars and charging stations and possessing other “incendiary devices” and a suppressed AR-15 rifle, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement Thursday.

“The days of committing crimes without consequence have ended,” Bondi said. “Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars.”

The strong statement came less than two days after Bondi promised that such attacks on Tesla also would be considered “nothing short of domestic terrorism.” A representative for the DOJ didn’t immediately respond to NPR’s additional questions on what the agency plans to do next on this issue.

Trump, for his part, has criticized the attacks and efforts to boycott Musk’s companies and, last week, said he would purchase a Tesla vehicle to support his advisor.

In Las Vegas, police said Tuesday that five Teslas were damaged in an attack on a sales and service center. Police believe the suspect also shot a gun at the cars and spray-painted the word “RESIST” on the entrance. No one was injured, which was also the case in the Colorado, Oregon and South Carolina incidents.

While no one has been injured or killed by these attacks, three professors and researchers of domestic terrorism and extremism tell NPR that they consider these cases to be acts of domestic terrorism.

“It’s absolutely domestic terrorism. I know that may discomfort many people. But vandalism is a crime that if it’s committed with a political motive, can certainly be defined as terrorism,” says Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the co-author of the forthcoming book, God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America.

These days, the concept of domestic terrorism has become increasingly complex, Hoffman says. While there are official definitions of domestic terrorism, there is no federal law on the matter. Here’s a breakdown of what constitutes domestic terrorism, how the U.S. has approached this issue in the past, and why it’s important despite the lack of a specific law.

Why are Tesla and Musk the target of vandalism?

Public anger toward Musk, a White House advisor, Tesla and SpaceX CEO and one of the world’s richest men, is growing as he leads efforts to slash government spending with his Department of Government Efficiency team. So far, this Trump administration entity has orchestrated the mass firings of thousands of government workers across multiple agencies in the past month.

In response, a grassroots protest has emerged in the form of the #TeslaTakedown movement. It is calling on Tesla drivers to sell their cars, dump company stock and join picket lines at Tesla showrooms.

But in some cases — including one of the people included in Bondi’s announcement Thursday — the protests have taken a more violent turn. Two people have been arrested and are now facing state and federal charges tied to two separate attacks on a Tesla dealership in Loveland, Colo., which involved throwing Molotov cocktails at the cars and, in one instance, spray-painting expletive-ridden messages on the showroom’s windows. No one was killed or injured during either incident.

Who is facing charges?

Lucy Grace Nelson, Daniel Brendan Kurt Clarke-Pounder and Adam Matthew Lansky are facing charges tied to their alleged vandalism of Tesla cars and dealerships in Colorado, South Carolina and Oregon, respectively.

Nelson is facing two charges of possession of an unregistered firearm and the malicious (attempted) destruction of property. She could face up to 30 years in prison.

Court documents allege that Nelson traveled to a Tesla dealership in Loveland, Colo., on multiple nights in January and February, allegedly lighting Molotov cocktails and throwing them in the dealership’s parking lot and spraying graffiti on the building’s windows and walls.

Nelson’s attorney, Mary V. Butterton, declined to comment on her client’s case.

Lansky is facing one charge of unlawful possession of an unregistered firearm. But an affidavit alleges he is also responsible for throwing Molotov cocktails and shooting a gun at Tesla vehicles and dealership facilities in Salem, Ore., on at least two separate occasions in January and February. Lansky’s attorney, Mark Patrick Ahlemeyer, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Court documents allege that witnesses say they saw Clarke-Pounder on March 7 using red spray paint to write obscenities against Trump and “Long Live Ukraine” on a Tesla charging station parking spot in North Charleston, S.C. Clarke-Pounder then allegedly started lighting bottles on fire and throwing them at the Tesla charging stations, according to court documents. He’s facing one charge of arson affecting interstate commerce.

Patrick Chisum, Clarke-Pounder’s attorney, told NPR that Clarke-Pounder is feeling overwhelmed.

“He’s being accused of something that’s very, very serious. And I think that the realization of how serious it’s being taken, especially with Attorney General Bondi’s statements, is kind of becoming self-evident. Both he and his family are very, very concerned and very scared,” Chisum said.

He added that his client “is a troubled young man who’s been suffering from multiple mental health issues.”

What falls under ‘domestic terrorism’

The U.S. doesn’t have a stand-alone federal domestic terrorism law. But at least 32 states and Washington, D.C., have their own state-level domestic terrorism laws. The FBI defines domestic terrorism as, “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.”

People might look at vandalism at a Tesla dealership and question whether it’s terrorism, says Hoffman.

But going back to the 1990s, the FBI, as the lead agency responsible for investigating terrorism in the United States, has investigated acts of vandalism and arson like those committed by eco-terrorism groups and treated them as domestic terrorism, he says.

One of the more famous cases of eco-terrorism was committed by the group known as The Family. The FBI says the group has been linked to more than 40 criminal acts between 1995 and 2001, including arson and vandalism, causing more than $45 million in damages. The group’s most notorious act was the 1998 arson attack on a ski resort in Vail, Colo. — which caused around $26 million in damages.

“To me, regardless of one’s opinions of Tesla cars, and its owner, this isn’t new,” Hoffman says.

A key element in determining what is domestic terrorism is the intent of the perpetrator. That can include a desire to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence government policy, or affect government conduct, says Faiza Patel, senior director of the Brennan Center For Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program.

And the intent of the Tesla vandals falls under this umbrella, she says.

“The whole point … is that [the vandals] are trying to influence government conduct. Everybody knows that Elon Musk is not only a federal employee, but is at the center of a lot of controversies about what the government is doing right now,” Patel says.

The act would also have to fall under one of the laws listed in the federal code as a domestic terrorism offense. These include attacks that use certain types of weapons — for example, weapons of mass destruction — or include acts such as hostage-taking or involve special federal interest, such as attacks on federal officials.

Other protesters have spray-painted swastikas and smashed windows of Tesla showrooms. But Patel says it’s unlikely authorities will consider those cases of petty vandalism — or of someone keying a Tesla — to be domestic terrorism.

Why the U.S. doesn’t have a federal domestic terrorism law

Extremism experts have long warned that domestic terrorism, mainly coming from far-right and white supremacy groups, posed a far greater threat than foreign terrorism. Still, despite sporadic efforts to do so, no federal domestic terrorism law has been created due to a lack of consensus.

Because of this, people involved in acts determined to be domestic terrorism are still just charged with offenses such as arson, murder, kidnapping and assault.

The perpetrators of the most famous incident of U.S. domestic terrorism, the Oklahoma City Bombing that killed 168 people, were never actually charged with domestic terrorism. Rather, Timothy McVeigh and his co-conspirator Terry L. Nichols were found guilty of several counts of murder and the use of a weapon of mass destruction or conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.

Although there is no federal domestic terrorism law, prosecutors can point to a perpetrator’s motive to classify a crime as terrorism during a trial and sentencing, which can affect a convicted person’s punishment, says Laura Dugan, a professor of human security and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University. If a crime is determined to be an act of terrorism, a perpetrator could receive additional years on their sentence.

Even after the Oklahoma City bombing, there was never enough agreement in Congress to support a domestic terrorism law, Hoffman says. It was always considered a highly politicized issue, he says.

“When you walked into a room going back to the 1990s and you talked about domestic terrorism there was a half of the room that immediately thought far-left radicals. And there was another half of the room that immediately thought white supremacists or seditious-minded conspiracy [believers],” Hoffman says.

Hoffman believes it’s “a huge problem” that the U.S. has no domestic terrorism statute. But Patel, whose Brennan Center has long opposed such a law, says this would only be weaponized by the federal government and would make it too easy for “an administration to label unpopular groups or political enemies as a domestic terrorist outfit.”

“I don’t see how it benefits anybody,” she says. “Given how polarized our current political environment is, it seems to me a particularly bad idea.”