WASHINGTON — The FBI should have done more to collect intelligence before the Capitol riot even though the bureau did prepare for the possibility of violence on Jan. 6, 2021, according to a watchdog report Thursday. It also said no undercover FBI employees were present that day and none of the bureau's informants was authorized to participate.
The report from the Justice Department inspector general's office knocks down a fringe conspiracy theory advanced by some Republicans in Congress that the FBI played a role in instigating the events that day, when rioters determined to overturn Republican Donald Trump's 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden stormed the building in a violent clash with police.
The review was released nearly four years after a dark chapter in history that shook the bedrock of American democracy.
Though narrow in scope, the report aims to shed light on gnawing questions that have dominated public discourse, including whether major intelligence failures preceded the riot and whether anyone in the crowd was for some reason acting at the behest of the FBI. It's the latest major investigation about a day unlike any other in U.S. history that has already yielded congressional inquiries and federal and state indictments.
The watchdog found that 26 FBI informants were in Washington for election-related protests on Jan. 6, and though three entered either the building or a restricted area outside, none had been authorized to do so by the bureau or to break the law or encourage others to do so.
The report also found that the FBI did take appropriate steps to prepare for the events of Jan. 6, but failed to scour its 56 field offices across the country for relevant intelligence.
The watchdog's lengthy review was launched days after the riot, following revelations that a Jan. 5, 2021, bulletin prepared by the FBI’s Norfolk, Virginia, field office that warned of the potential for “war” at the Capitol. The former head of the FBI’s office in Washington has said that once he received that Jan. 5 warning, the information was quickly shared with other law enforcement agencies through a joint terrorism task force.
But Capitol Police leaders have said they were unaware of that document at the time and have insisted that they had no specific or credible intelligence 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 President Joe Biden’s term in January, has defended his agency's handing of the intelligence report. He told lawmakers in 2021 that the report was disseminated though 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 did communicate that information in a timely fashion to the Capitol Police and (Metropolitan Police Department) in not one, not two, but three different ways,” Wray said at the time.
The conspiracy theory that federal law enforcement officers entrapped 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 agents pretending to be Trump supporters were responsible for instigating the violence.
And former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who withdrew as Trump’s pick as attorney general amid scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations, sent a letter to Wray in 2021 asking how many informants were at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and if they were “merely passive informants or active instigators.”
It wasn't previously clear how many FBI informants were in the crowd that day. Wray refused to say during a congressional hearing last year how many of the people who entered the Capitol and surrounding area on Jan. 6 were either FBI employees or people with whom the FBI had made contact. But Wray said the “notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous.”
One FBI informant testified last year at the trial of former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio about marching to the Capitol with his fellow extremist group members, and described communicating with his handler as the mob of Trump supporters swarmed the building. But the informant wasn't in any of the Telegram chats the Proud Boys were accused of using to plot violence in the days leading up to Jan. 6.
FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, March 11, in Washington. Associated Press
