Here is the truth.
Justice Department Watchdog Finds No FBI Agents Or Informants Involved In Jan. 6 Riot
The report is a major debunking of Republican conspiracy theories, but it's four years late and comes after Donald Trump is already president-elect.
WASHINGTON ― No undercover
FBI agents were at the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, and no paid informants encouraged
Donald Trump’s supporters to riot that day, according to a new report from a Department of Justice watchdog.
“We found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6,” the Justice Department wrote in a
summary of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s final report on the Jan. 6 attack of the U.S. Capitol.
The report is a significant blow to Republican conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.
Some of Trump’s Republican allies have asserted that the violence of the attack was, in part, the byproduct of undercover FBI agents or informants whipping up the crowd. While trial testimony, including informant testimony at seditious conspiracy trials, confirmed there were informants on the ground on Jan. 6, FBI Director Christopher Wray has emphatically denied that the agency was in any way involved in fueling the chaos at the Capitol.
The inspector general report offered a more authoritative debunking of the Republican claims about FBI agents or informants participating in the riot.
Horowitz’s report has been a long time coming. He said he would produce findings a week after Donald Trump’s supporters — hundreds of far-right extremists, including members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers — stormed the Capitol, assaulting hundreds of police as Congress was forced to delay its certification of the 2020 election.
Trump repeated his vow to pardon the 1,500 rioters charged with federal crimes in a
Time magazine interview published Thursday. Hundreds have been charged with assaulting police officers.
