(CNSNews.com) – While the White House held a Countering Violent Extremism summit this week to talk about “extremist ideologies that radicalize” – not radical Islam in particular but myriad forms of extremism domestic and foreign – CNN reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has circulated an intelligence assessment on the “domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists.”
Police during a routine traffic stop. (AP)
The assessment, reviewed by CNN, was produced in coordination with the FBI and “counts 24 violent sovereign citizen-related attacks across the U.S. since 2010,” the news group reported on Feb. 20.
According to the report, "(Sovereign citizen) violence during 2015 will occur most frequently during routine law enforcement encounters at a suspect's home, during enforcement stops and at government offices."
The report adds that "law enforcement officers will remain the primary target of (sovereign citizen) violence over the next year due to their role in physically enforcing laws and regulations."
In general, the conflicts with sovereign citizens occur when they refuse to cooperate with police officers, often during traffic stops, because they claim the police lack the authority to stop them, question them, or take other steps.
CNSNews.com contacted the DHS and asked if and when its report might be made available to the public, and why it apparently was released solely to CNN. DHS spokesman Sy Lee in an e-mail response said "the report you are referring to is not public" and would not be made available to the public.