Understanding The Threat's John Guandolo participated in a conference call earlier this month hosted by the religious-right organization Raleigh Aglow, during which he called on President Donald Trump to take "direct military action" against the city of Minneapolis to prevent it from being taken over by a "Sharia-adherent police department" with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison serving as the "Islamic leader of Minnesota."
A radical right-wing commentator and conspiracy theorist, Guandolo is a disgraced former FBI agent and anti-Islam activist who now trains law enforcement agencies around the country to identify seemingly anyone with dark skin and a beard as an Islamic terrorist. Guandolo has called for Muslims to be banned from serving in Congress or working in government, called for the United States to bomb Mecca, repeatedly called for members of the Obama administration to be executed for treason, and urged Trump to round up and execute the leaders of Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist groups.
"The Minneapolis police department is probably going to be disbanded," Guandolo said on the June 6 call. "What do you think they're going to replace it with in Minneapolis? It's going to be a Sharia-adherent police department ... The people running it will be jihadis and that will be the enforcement arm."
"Do you understand Keith Ellison is going to be the Islamic leader of Minnesota?" he continued. "That's what we're talking about. And if you think that's not where this is going, then you don't understand what's going on. That's real. It's happening there. If it happens this week, it won't surprise me that they disband a municipal police department in a major metropolitan area and replace it with a Sharia-[adherent one]. That is your sign."
"They called me a lunatic for talking about the state of Minneapolis and what's going on there," Guandolo said. "It was gone five years ago into enemy held territory, and the only way it's going come back is with direct military action, American troops going into Minneapolis and yanking out the leaders of the communist and jihadi movement and restoring order."
