Even as the bureau prepares for the possibility of violence on Jan. 6, 2021, the FBI should have done more to gather intelligence before the Capitol riots, according to a watchdog report Thursday. It also said that no undercover FBI personnel were present that day and that no informant from the bureau was authorized to participate.
A report by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General covers a fringe conspiracy theory advanced by some Republicans in Congress that the FBI played a role in inciting the events of the day, when rioters determined to reverse Republican Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden attacked. Violent clashes with the police in the building.
The review comes nearly four years after a dark chapter in history that shook the foundations of American democracy.
Although narrow in scope, the report aims to dodge questions that have dominated public discourse, including whether there were major intelligence failures before the riots and whether anyone in the crowd was acting at the behest of the FBI for any reason. It’s the latest major investigation of any day in American history that has already featured congressional inquiries and federal and state indictments.
The watchdog found that 26 FBI informants were in Washington on Jan. 6 for an election-related protest, and that three entered either the building or outside restricted areas, although the bureau did not authorize anyone to do so or break the law or encourage others to do so. to do so.
The report also found that the FBI took appropriate steps to prepare for the events of January 6, but failed to scan its 56 field offices across the country for relevant intelligence.
The watchdog’s lengthy review was launched days after the riots, on January 5, 2021, following the revelation that a bulletin prepared by the FBI’s Norfolk, Virginia, field office warned of the possibility of “war” on the Capitol. The former head of the FBI’s office in Washington said that after he received the Jan. 5 alert, the information was shared with other law enforcement agencies through the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
But Capitol Police leaders have said they were not aware of that document at the time and have insisted they had no specific or credible information that any demonstration at the Capitol would result in a large-scale attack on the building.
FBI Director Chris Wray, who announced this week his plans to resign at the end of President Joe Biden’s term in January, has defended his agency’s handing over of the intelligence report. He told lawmakers in 2021 that the report was discussed at the command post of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Washington, and circulated even though it was posted on an Internet portal available to other law enforcement agencies.
“We communicated that information in a timely manner to the Capitol Police and the (Metropolitan Police Department) in not one, not two, but three different ways,” Wray said.
A conspiracy theory that federal law enforcement officers have implicated members of the mob has spread in conservative circles, including among some Republican lawmakers. Rep. Clay Higgins recently suggested on a podcast that agents pretending to be Trump supporters were responsible for inciting the violence.
And former representative Matt Gaetz, who resigned as Trump’s attorney general amid investigations into sex-trafficking allegations, sent a letter to Wray in 2021 asking how many informants were in the Capitol on Jan. 6 and if they were “merely passive informants or active instigators.”.
It was not previously clear how many FBI informants were in the crowd that day. Wray declined to say during a congressional hearing last year how many of the people who entered the Capitol and surrounding areas on Jan. 6 were either FBI employees or individuals contacted by the FBI. But Wray said “the idea that the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was part of some operation organized by FBI sources and agents is ridiculous”.
An FBI informant testified at the trial of former Pride Boys leader Enrique Tario last year about marching on the Capitol with members of his fellow extremist group and described having a conversation with his handler as a crowd of Trump supporters entered the building. But the informant was not in any of the Telegram chats that the Pride Boys are accused of using to plan the violence in the days leading up to January 6.
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