WATCH: Senator Ted Cruz grills FBI Director Wray on Antifa and BLM violence during summer of 2020

At a Senate hearing on the Capitol riot on Tuesday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) questioned FBI Director Chris Wray about the Antifa and BLM violence that rocked American cities through the summer of 2020.

"Most of that activity, a lot of that activity, I would say, fell in what we would categorize as anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism," Wray said.

"In the past year, we have seen massive rioting and violence as extremists," Cruz began, "many of them leftist extremists, took to the streets across the country. Just two weeks at the end of May and early June, over 700 law enforcement officers were injured.

"Looking at all of 2020, over 14,000 people have been arrested in 49 cities, and at least 25 people have died in the violence. And it's estimated that the property damages from these riots could exceed $2 billion.

"What is the FBI doing to counter this ongoing pattern to domestic terrorism?" Cruz asked.

Wray replied "So Senator, certainly we tried to respond aggressively with our partners to the domestic violent extremism that we saw playing out in streets all across the country this summer. Most of that activity, a lot of that activity, I would say, fell in what we would categorize as anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism.

"Some of it is anarchist violent extremism, some of it is militia violent extremism, some of it might even be 'sovereign citizen' violent extremism. But we saw a huge uptick in violent extremism in that broad bucket over the course of last year.

"And so we're trying to be aggressive with the tools we have in terms of charges we're bringing, and we're trying to, as talked about frankly in connection with January 6, same thing for the summer, we're trying to look at sources of funding, planning coordination, trying to learn more about trade craft and tactics and things like that so that we can be better prepared to prevent it, and feed information to our state and local partners so that they can better be prepared to prevent it.

"As I think I said to Senator Grassley, last year, we had three times the number of anarchist violent extremist arrests from say the prior year I think it was, certainly more last year than the prior three years combined.

"And we did see last year, as Senator Grassley noted in his opening comments, the first murder by an anarchist violent extremist last year in quite some time, certainly. Which was the individual who in Portland killed a supporter of an opposing viewpoint. And then the individual in question, the violent extremist, was himself killed in a shoot-out as the marshals were trying to apprehend him," Wray concluded.

Democrat senators, such as Dick Durban (D-IL) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) were insistent on framing the story of American civil unrest as a sort of white supremacist rebellion that led to what they have termed insurrection. Republican legislators look at the summer of violence and destruction quite differently, noting the primarily leftist radicals who spurred on rioting, as well as protests, in hundreds of cities across the country.