The Biden administration designated critics of Covid-19 vaccine and mask mandates “Domestic Violent Extremists,” or DVEs, according to documents declassified last week by US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard following a Freedom of Information Act request by Public and Catherine Herridge Reports.

The documents included a December 13, 2021, report by the National Counterterrorism Centre, the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) labelling views opposing mandates and restrictions as “prominent narratives” that may be connected to violent extremism, including militias and groups “motivated by QAnon.”

Those views included “the belief that Covid-19 vaccines are unsafe, especially for children, are part of a government or global conspiracy to deprive individuals of their civil liberties and livelihoods or are designed to start a new social or political order.“

According to the document, “linking, citing, quoting or voicing the same narratives raised by these DVEs” is “likely” protected by the First Amendment – unless the people expressing these views were “acting in concert with a threat actor.”

The document did not define “threat actor” or explain how such a determination is made.

Former FBI Agent Steve Friend told Public that the DVE designation created an “articulable purpose” for the FBI or other government agencies to begin an “assessment” of specific individuals. According to Friend, such an assessment is often the first step toward a formal investigation.

Writing on X, Catherine Herridge said the documents appear to “draw a straight line between opposition to vaccine mandates and elevated levels of domestic terrorism.”

Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defence, applauded the release of the documents, which show “how perilously close we came to this Orwellian nightmare.”

“The administration’s redefinition of the word ‘extremism’ is as outrageous as its redefinition of ‘vaccine,’” Holland said. “While we are not yet in the clear, at least we have a better idea of what we’ve been up against.”

Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, said he wasn’t surprised by the revelations in the newly declassified documents.

“By the summer of 2021, it became obvious that the Biden administration would deploy all features of the pandemic response for political purposes,” Tucker said. “What began in bad science became, over time, the deployment of weaponized political division.”

A second document declassified last week, a “special analysis” dated February 3, 2022, and authored by the FBI, DHS and the National Counterterrorism Centre, suggested that “adherents” of “DVE ideologies” continued to show “anger at government responses to the Covid-19 pandemic … thus increasing the likelihood that violent extremist messaging or an attack would encourage other DVEs to take action.”

Speaking to Fox News’ Will Cain on Friday, Gabbard said the documents are unclear about who might be considered a threat, potentially including anyone using “their First Amendment rights to oppose certain policies of the Biden administration.”

According to the document, such people were likely to target “federal government officials, healthcare workers or others who enforce vaccination mandates or participate in vaccination efforts,” potentially in connection with policies including “workplace vaccination policies that carry disciplinary or termination penalties.”

Sayer Ji, co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom, said the documents show “the goal was never health, it was obedience.”

“Public health became the new religion, and dissent was labelled blasphemy,” Ji said. “But beneath it all, this was about narrative monopolisation – centralised control of science, speech and sovereignty.”

According to the 2021 report, “the controversy surrounding vaccination mandates for school-age children, employees facing termination for lack of compliance, or perceptions of unfair healthcare treatment for the unvaccinated might trigger increased violence by DVEs.”

The report cited opposition to school vaccination programs.

“The availability of a vaccine for all school-age children might spur conspiracy theories and perceptions that schools will vaccinate children against parents’ will and may increase the potential for violence,” the report states.

Parents in at least three states – Maine, North Carolina and Vermont – have sued local school districts and officials after their children were administered the Covid-19 vaccine at school without consent.

However, according to the 2021 report, under such conditions, “DVEs would most likely plot violent acts to intimidate healthcare workers and officials charged with implementing Covid-19 mitigation measures as well as, possibly, killings or kidnappings of state, local, or federal government personnel.”

A 2024 report by the US House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponisation of the Federal Government noted that, during the pandemic, the FBI sought to investigate parents who expressed opposition to Covid-19 restrictions at school board meetings. The report referred to this as an example of a “two-tiered system of government.”

According to Michael Rectenwald, author of The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unravelling the Global Agenda, the newly declassified documents suggest Covid-19 measures were less about public health and more about targeting potential dissenters.

“It is not at all surprising that resisters of the Covid-19 measures were labelled DVEs. If public health had been the major concern, then said populations would have been treated and labelled medically and not in terms of their positions with reference to government actions,” Rectenwald said.

Tucker agreed. “The mask mandates were, in part, a tool of humiliation and a drive to ferret out dissenters. It was the same with vaccine mandates: they drove the noncompliant out of government work, health care and university life.”

Speaking to Public, Friend said the DVE designation also gave the Biden administration leverage to pressure Big Tech companies and social media platforms to censor content critical of government Covid-19 policies.

“It’s a way they could go to social media companies and say, ‘You don’t want to propagate domestic terrorism, so you should take down this content,’” Friend said.

Gabbard told Fox News such pressure succeeded, as social media companies did not want to be perceived as supporting “the spread of domestic violent extremism.”

Documents released as part of the “Twitter Files” revealed how agencies like the FBI and DHS participated in a “censorship industrial complex,” pressuring Big Tech to censor narratives questioning Covid-19 policies. In 2023, the US House of Representatives heard testimony about FBI collusion with Twitter to censor content.

Dr Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, said that DHS continued its efforts to target Americans who criticised government Covid-19 policies even after the publication date of the newly declassified files.

Nass cited a February 7, 2022, DHS bulletin stating that the US remained in “a heightened threat environment fuelled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information.”

According to the bulletin, these “threat actors” included “lone offenders and small groups acting in furtherance of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances,” including opposition to Covid-19 policies.

“Covid-19 mitigation measures … have been used by domestic violent extremists to justify violence since 2020 and could continue to inspire these extremists to target government, healthcare and academic institutions that they associate with those measures,” the bulletin stated.

Ji said the newly declassified files and previously released documents, including the DHS bulletin and the “Twitter Files,” reveal “a sprawling, coordinated machine involving federal agencies, tech giants, NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and transatlantically coordinated intelligence actors working together to erase dissent.”

“The FBI, DHS and White House treated concerned citizens not as fellow Americans, but as threats to be neutralized,” Ji said. “This wasn’t about ‘misinformation.’ It was about protecting the profits, power and psychological control mechanisms of a technocratic elite.”

In March 2021, Ji was included on “The Disinformation Dozen” – a list produced by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate of the 12 “leading online anti-vaxxers” responsible for most online “misinformation” about vaccines. Ji connected that list to a broader effort to censor voices opposed to establishment Covid-19 narratives.

“This was not a debate over science. It was a full-spectrum information war. They weaponised fear, shame and classification systems originally built for violent threats and redirected them at wellness educators, doctors, scientists and parents,” Ji said.

Nebraska chiropractor Ben Tapper, who was also included in “The Disinformation Dozen,” said branding opponents of government Covid-19 policies DVEs “was a deliberate move to smear dissenters and silence those questioning their overreach.”

Gabbard told Fox News she is “committed to the American people to root out … the weaponisation and politicisation of the intelligence community and national security state against the American people.” But Tapper questioned whether this will happen.

“Will there ever be justice? Our court system is broken, and our judges are hesitant to take on any Covid-related censorship cases, wary of political backlash or pressure from the establishment,” Tapper said.

• A Tell Media report / By Michael Nevradakis – Senior reporter for The Defender