US President Joe Biden’s successful inauguration ceremony just passed without any incidents, amidst many security questions. It turns out, nothing happens when former President Trump has his supporters organized elsewhere. That remarkably is the most important security lesson from the past hours.

The top security priority after the Capitol events was President Biden’s security at the inauguration. The Capitol events served as a warning.

The authorities were prepared this time around with 25,000 National Guard soldiers securing the parameter, with a vetting process by the FBI and the Secret Service to ensure that Trump mob supporters with a military background could not sneak among the National Guard ranks.

“Day of fire”. That’s how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to the Capitol insurrection, which happens to be the exact same phrase President George W. Bush used on the occasion of 9/11. That is not coincidental. But why didn’t the FBI draw these same 9/11 parallels?

In spring last year, when I was running for UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of speech, in a leaked memo to the New York Times, FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich was quoted in a reaction to the Black Lives Matters protests. Bowdich maintained that the protesters should be arrested under an outdated racketeering law from the 1940s. The leaked memo showed that Mr Bowdich considered the social justice movement “a national crisis” comparable to 9/11. The hundreds of thousands of people mourning and marching across the country, unified by the simple thought that no life should be taken lightly, for nothing, were actually similar to terrorists in the eyes of the FBI who wanted to charge them as racketeers. Why won’t Bowdich evoke 9/11 now, when it comes to far-right actual terrorism? We are talking about plans to blow up buildings and assassinate law-makers.

There is evidence appearing now through the courts that the Trump mob indeed intended to capture and assassinate congressmen. A new court filing by federal prosecutors says that Trump supporters intended to "capture and assassinate" elected officials during the Capitol riot.

The FBI has a misplaced terrorism obsession with the progressive left, while lightly ignoring the far-right, which is by far the more violent and much more organized group. The Capitol events security mishandling demonstrated a different attitude when it comes to the latter group.

There is an obvious difference in motives between protesting over illegal killings by the police and protesting to contest the winner of a democratic election because your side lost.

There is a difference between street clashes with police in social justice protests that have gone overboard and have turned violent, on one hand, and placing bombs at political buildings, plans to kidnap and assassinate politicians, and violent usurping of the certification of a democratically elected president. The difference should be obvious, and yet the FBI is pursuing its obsession with the left voices, largely ignoring the violent extremists and the real violent terrorism threat on the far right, as recently revealed by an Intercept investigation.

In a public statement, the FBI made sure that the public understood its own misguided standard used in the threat assessment in the Capitol attacks by the Trump mob, namely the aspirations vs intentions test. The FBI official explained that the FBI needs to consider that some online activity and planning by the far right could simply be “keyboard bravado”. So, “keyboard bravado” is now the new “locker room talk”.

It is not surprising that the FBI uses different standards to assess the threat on the far-left and on the far-right. Former FBI director Hoover called Martin Luther King “one of the most dangerous negroes in America”. MLK was far from a hero for the FBI. It is not uncommon for the FBI even today to mischaracterize center-left voices of reasonable progressives who are anti-violence, pro-rights and pro-equality as far-left anarchists and communists, magnifying the threat on the left while ignoring the bigger threat on the right. Calling reasonable center-left Democrats anarchists and communists is a classical President Putin move. Let’s recall that ahead of the presidential elections in November, Russian President Putin endorsed Biden and the Democrats as communists whom we would get along with, in order to discredit them.

Let’s look at the actions and the security measures present around the two types of crowds. In a recent interview I wondered why FBI deputy director Bowdich won't evoke 9/11 now in relation to far-right terrorism.

Notably, the FBI have now opened many cases for “domestic terrorism” into the Capitol attack and it is true that they are saying that they are treating these cases as “international terrorism” but where is the FBI public condemnation of terrorism? We have not seen public statements by the FBI director Christopher Wray and FBI deputy director David Bowdich. Why won’t Bowdich come out and evoke 9/11 now, just like he did with the Black Lives Matter movement?

America has a long way to go to recover from the damage that Trump and his cronies, spread across the various US agencies, have done to democratic principles and human rights. The Trump institutional capture of key agencies such as the FBI and the CIA, let alone DOJ, has led the country into a downward spiral. I myself just launched a $1 UN lawsuit against the Trump circle at the UN, in an attempt to clear the Trump circle also from the UN where Trump’s political appointee, UNICEF’s chief Henrietta Fore who is also a former US Under Secretary of State, was leading the parade. But as usual, the loyal Trump cronies are now distancing themselves, as the upcoming Senate impeachment trial will show – and the UNICEF boss is no different.

As Trump’s presidency drew to a close, it is important to remember that is not true that Donald Trump was a peaceful non-interventionist. The assassination of General Soleimani a year ago shows that. So do the Capitol events.

The capitol events were an embarrassment for the FBI who failed the due diligence standard of the reasonably expected measures that should have been taken in a similar situation because they were dealing with the President’s supporters. Then, the FBI decided to justify their inaction with the false “keyboard bravado” explanation, which does not explain anything.

The FBI are now running social media campaigns for the collection of evidence on suspects in the Capitol attacks but the truth is that the FBI does not need random people to phone them and point them to the bad guys. The FBI follow these groups and people, they know everything. It’s just a question of choice as to when to bring out the collected over time evidence. The FBI is in a hurry now only because there is public and social pressure to do something. All of America is watching what will happen to the bad guys.

A couple of days ahead of the Capitol events, I noted on Twitter that Homeland Security acting Secretary, Chad Wolf, was on a trip to Cyprus, while America was “burning”.  The Cyprus frictions in the European Mediterranean seem like a holiday now, in comparison to the Capitol events. Several days later, Wolf resigned.

In his last hours in office, Trump issued dozens of pardons – notably that of Steve Bannon. The question of justice for the Capitol events is as relevant as ever, and some of the last-minute Trump pardons could relate to the Capitol attacks.

It is safe to say that former Attorney General Bill Barr is not missed by many people. The Trump supporters’ cases would not have received fair treatment at the Department of Justice under his watch. The new Attorney General in the Biden Administration, judge Merrick Garland, in fact, might discover that many cases from the Bill Barr time will have to be reopened. The DOJ inspector general will have a role to play in this, in showing that he is not just another Bill Barr who tries to remove the political aspects from purely political cases.

Looking forward, it is time for American democracy to demonstrate its elasticity. I listened to President Joe Biden’s inauguration speech and was inspired by his “restless, bold, optimistic” phrase that well describes Americans and those that admire America exactly for always being able to bounce back and find a way. That’s elasticity.

But legal justice necessarily has to be a part of that elasticity and of fixing things. We have to ignore phony calls for “unity” and “healing” made by criminals themselves, trying to escape justice now.  Former FBI director James Comey should speak only for himself when he makes the call for impeachment-only justice for Trump and for dropping the actual criminal cases against the former President. Comey does not speak for the rest of us. There can’t be unity without ensuring justice first.

Iveta Cherneva is an Amazon best-selling author and a political commentator who previously worked for Congress and the UN. She was a top finalist for UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of speech in 2020.