John Guandolo

John D. Guandolo (born ) is an American former Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent and counterterrorism expert who has provided training seminars for law enforcement and local elected officials across the United States. Having been described as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist for his work after his retirement from the FBI, his seminars have been controversial and protested against by advocacy groups. He ran the seminars with the organization Understanding the Threat until the group closed down in 2023. after which he served in the U.S. Marine Corps and took part in the Gulf War's Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm as a platoon commander in the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines. He thereafter served in the 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company, and was deployed to the Adriatic and Bosnia. after having been part of the recovery and investigation of the airliner crash into the Pentagon. founded in 2010. Other activists working for the organization at various times have included Chris Gaubatz, John Bennett, John Andrews and Peggy Mast. which aimed to "educate the public on the counter jihad movement," and has worked with groups such as ACT for America and the Center for Security Policy. and a "terrorist organization which hates and violently opposes free speech." The same year the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) attempted to cancel an event in Maricopa County, Arizona. In 2018, Guandolo hosted a law enforcement training in San Angelo, Texas, which after pressure from advocacy groups was rejected by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement because it "paints an entire religion with an overly broad brush" and "does not seem to provide any law enforcement training value to attendees." The same year, several of his planned events in the Midwest were cancelled due to local activism. He was also secretly filmed by an Al Jazeera undercover investigation. By 2022, Guandolo's bookings from law enforcement had "lessened significantly" according to the SPLC.

By 2022, Guandolo also organized training sessions for right-wing citizens about the perceived threat of "communist & Jihadist networks," In June 2023 his organization Understanding the Threat closed down, stating that "the assaults from our adversaries financially and legally have been withering and overwhelming."

Culpeper auxiliary deputy Guandolo was appointed an auxiliary deputy in Culpeper County, Virginia by Sheriff Scott Jenkins in 2014, as Jenkins hosted Guandolo's law enforcement training seminars in 2014 and 2016. The seminar in 2014 was protested against by the SPLC and CAIR, after which the Rappahannock regional criminal justice academy withdrew training credits for the course. A California-based nonprofit legal group, Muslim Advocates, in 2018 sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to inspect public records related to the sheriff office's relationship with Guandolo, stating that Guandolo and his associates "have a long, well-documented history of spreading anti-Muslim sentiment through public comments and private law enforcement trainings in the United States." later finding that he "didn't properly train or keep records on [the] reserve force."

Civil lawsuit Guandolo was accused in 2017 of assaulting Hennepin County, Minnesota sheriff Rich Stanek at a National Sheriffs' Association (NSA) expo in Reno, Nevada, where Guandolo was a presenter. Nevada prosecutors quietly dismissed the charges against Guandolo, stating that even from a video of the incident, it was not clear who made first contact. Two years later, a Dallas County jury, however, awarded Stanek $600,000 in a civil lawsuit. Guandolo later lost a self-defense appeal in court.

Views on Islam and politics Having described Islam as "barbaric and evil", In 2018, Guandolo's Twitter account was suspended after he posted a tweet that tied the Democratic Party to the Ku Klux Klan and the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. In 2019, he suggested the US should bomb the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia with cruise missiles in retaliation for the Naval Air Station Pensacola shooting. Following the January 6 United States Capitol attack, having been present at the pro-Trump "Stop the Steal" rally with a group to pray,

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