Wait you want to hear the FBI's version of why people who film factory farms should be charged with attempted use of WMDs?

Probably the FBI is not willing to explain why they want to pretend that exposing illegal animal cruelty is the same thing as planning a mustard gas attack.

Their rationale, from the article:

The bureau has floated the idea of charging animal rights activists under a statute prohibiting biological weapons, a subtype of WMD, the records show. This may include toxins, viruses, and microorganisms used to deliberately spur death and disease.

Marceau described this focus on agroterrorism as an effort to pin blame on activists for the rampant disease outbreaks on factory farms.

I find this hard to believe it would fly in court. Unless it's true of course, which seems unlikely. Animal rights activists releasing a disease to kill livestock (and maybe start a pandemic) seems illogical, but not everything animal rights extremists (if that's what these people are) do is always logical.

It could just be the FBI gathering intelligence in an area they expect violent extremists to arise. Same way you might track militia activity. Doesn't make a ton of sense to me but the FBI has had a big fear of animal rights activists doing extremists shit for a long time.

They're doing it because someone called their representative and asked them to bring it up with the DOJ.

This just sounds like another propaganda piece from the intercept