Overview
- Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Knowles said the federal government must act to stop what he called an accelerating threat from left‑wing violence.
- He recounted a 2023 University of Pittsburgh event disrupted by hundreds of protesters, described a firework thrown at police that injured officers, said FBI agents helped identify Brian and Krystal DiPippa, and criticized their sentences of five years in prison and three years’ probation as too lenient.
- He argued that widely used datasets undercount left‑wing incidents, citing the Covenant School shooting and the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests as examples he says are excluded.
- He pointed to an Atlantic article referencing a CSIS study to claim the Left is currently more violent than the Right.
- The hearing, titled “Politically Violent Attacks: A Threat to Our Constitutional Order,” featured witnesses including Chad Wolf, Daniel Hodges, William Braniff, and Kyle Shideler, as Democrats urged bipartisan condemnation without assigning blame to one side.