The government appears confident that the attack was ‘targeted terrorism’; expect federal capital murder charges in the coming weeks.

The Trump Justice Department and FBI are exhibiting welcome signs that there will be none of the familiar hand-wringing about whether last night’s terrorist attack in Washington, D.C., was, in fact, a terrorist attack. (See our editorial on the attack.)

The New York Times reports that the FBI is describing the shooting murder of two young Israel Embassy staffers — Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim — by a gunman who screamed “Free, free Palestine,” as “targeted terrorism” (although I’d caution that I do not see the word terrorism in any quote from a bureau official, just in the headline, “Slaying at Jewish Museum Was Targeted Terrorism, F.B.I. Says”). The Times quotes director Kash Patel calling the murders “targeted anti-Semitic violence.” The Washington Post notes Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s preliminary conclusion: “Early indicators are that this is an act of targeted violence.” Bongino elaborated that the suspect, 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez of Chicago, appears to have been focused on the event at the Capital Jewish Museum, not on specific people. (Translation: He was out to kill Jews, not particular Jews.)

There is some suggestion in the reporting that the suspect has made statements to the FBI, though not a description of any such statements. (As I detailed this morning, it was reported that the suspect told police where he had discarded the murder weapon.) Bongino also revealed that investigators are trying to authenticate a manifesto as belonging to the suspect. The document is reportedly titled, “Escalate for Gaza, Bring the War Home.” Notably, “bring the war home” was a phrase made famous by the Weather Underground terrorists of the Sixties and Seventies, who carried out terrorist attacks in the United States in order to “bring home” the war in Vietnam.

I expect that we will soon be seeing a federal complaint filed by the new United States attorney in Washington, Jeanine Pirro. Long before she was at Fox News, she was the district attorney for Westchester County. (I got to know Jeanine then when I was running the Southern District of New York’s satellite U.S. Attorney’s Office in White Plains.) She is a highly experienced, very competent prosecutor — including in homicide cases, which county DA’s offices handle with much more regularity than federal prosecutors do.

Many people are asking about capital charges. I expect they will be forthcoming, but not in the pre-indictment stage. (A criminal complaint is just a sworn statement, usually by an FBI agent in federal cases, to demonstrate to the court that there is probable cause for whatever charges are alleged in the complaint. It will be followed, likely in the next couple of weeks, by a formal indictment, as the Constitution requires.) The Justice Department has an elaborate pre-indictment review process before capital charges are filed. It is important to follow this process to the letter; many judges are hostile to the death penalty, and small technical errors or departures from capital processes can later become rationalizations for reversing death penalty verdicts.

That said, both Attorney General Pamela Bondi and President Trump (through his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt) have indicated that the suspect “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” (as the Post’s story quotes the AG). Obviously, in this case, that would entail capital murder charges.