WASHINGTON — The FBI should have done more to gather intelligence before the Insurrection at the Capitolaccording to a watchdog report It also said Thursday that no undercover FBI employees were on the scene on Jan. 6, 2021, and that none of the bureau’s informants were authorized to participate.
The report from the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General debunks a fringe conspiracy theory advanced by some Republicans in Congress that the FBI played a role in inciting the events that day, when rioters determined were to overturn Republican Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. the building in a violent clash with police.
The review, released nearly four years after a dark chapter in history that shook the foundations of American democracy, was limited in scope but intended to shed light on nagging questions that have dominated public debate, including whether major intelligence failures preceded the riot and whether the FBI somehow provoked the violence. It’s the latest major investigation into a day unlike any other in American history that has already yielded results congressional investigations And federal and state charges.
The report offers a mixed assessment of the FBI’s performance in the lead-up to the riot, praising the bureau for preparing for the possibility of violence and for trying to identify known “domestic terrorism subjects” who were planning that day to come to Washington.
But it said the FBI, in a move the now deputy director described as a “basic step that was missed,” had failed to recruit informants in all 56 field offices for relevant information. That was a step, the report concluded, “that could have helped the FBI and its law enforcement partners as they prepared ahead of January 6.”
In addition, the watchdog found that 26 FBI informants were in Washington for election protests on Jan. 6, and while three entered the Capitol or a restricted area outside it, none were authorized by the bureau to do so or to break the rules. law or encourage others to do so. Many of the 26 informants provided the FBI with information before the riot, but it “was no more specific than or consistent with other sources of information” the FBI obtained from other sources.
The FBI said in a letter responding to the report that it accepts the Inspector General’s recommendation “regarding potential process improvements for future events.”
The lengthy review was launched days after the riot as the FBI faced questions about whether it missed warning signs or adequately disseminated the information it received, including a January 5, 2021 bulletin issued by the FBI’s field office in Norfolk, Virginia, that warned of the potential for “war” in the Capitol. The inspector general found that the information in that bulletin was widely shared.
Separately, the report said that between November 2020 and early January 2021, the FBI’s New Orleans field office was told by a source that protesters planned to station a “quick reaction force” in northern Virginia “to be armed and prepared to be against violence. that day in DC, if necessary.”
That information was shared the day before the riot with the FBI’s Washington Field Office, members of intelligence agencies and some federal law enforcement agencies, the inspector general found. But there was no indication that the FBI informed Northern Virginia police about the information, the report said. An FBI official told the inspector general there was “nothing actionable or immediately concerning about it.”
A stash of weapons at a Virginia hotel as part of a “quick reaction force” was a central part of the Justice Department’s seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes and other members of the far-right extremist group.
FBI Director Chris Wray, who this week announced his plans to resign at the end of President Joe Biden’s term in January, has defended his agency’s handing over the intelligence report. He told lawmakers in 2021 that the report was distributed through the joint terrorism task force, discussed at a command post in Washington and posted on an internet portal available to other law enforcement agencies.
“We communicated that information to the Capitol Police and (Metropolitan Police Department) in a timely manner in not one, not two, but three different ways,” Wray said at the time.
The conspiracy theory that federal law enforcement officers are entrapping members of the mob has been spread in conservative circles, including by some Republican lawmakers. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., recently suggested on a podcast that officers posing as Trump supporters were responsible for inciting the violence.
And former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who resigned as Trump’s pick for 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 whether that was the case. “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 at a congressional hearing last year how many of the people who entered the Capitol and surrounding area on Jan. 6 were FBI employees or people with whom the FBI had had contact. But Wray said the “idea that the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was somehow part of an operation orchestrated by FBI sources and agents is ridiculous.”
One FBI informant testified last year during the trial of former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio about marching on the Capitol with his fellow extremist group members, describing communications with his handler as the crowd of Trump supporters swarmed the building. But the informant was not present in the Telegram chats in which the Proud Boys were accused of plotting violence in the days leading up to January 6.