The FBI should have done more to gather intelligence before the riot at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a report by the US Department of Justice’s inspector general’s office said on Thursday.
The report comes nearly four years after rioters stormed the building following then-US president Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss to now-US President Joe Biden.
The report offered a mixed assessment of the FBI’s performance in the run-up to the riot, crediting it for preparing for the possibility of violence and for trying to identify known “domestic terrorism subjects” who planned to come to Washington that day.
Photo: AFP
However, it said that the FBI, in an action the now-deputy director described as a “basic step that was missed,” failed to canvass informants across all 56 of its field offices for any relevant intelligence.
That was a step “that could have helped the FBI and its law enforcement partners with their preparations in advance of January 6,” it said.
The report found that 26 FBI informants were in Washington for election-related protests on Jan. 6, including three who had been tasked with traveling to the city to report on others who were potentially planning to attend the day’s events.
Four of the informants entered the Capitol without having been authorized to do so by the FBI, or to break the law or encourage others to do so, the report said.
Many of the 26 informants provided the FBI with information before the riot, but it “was no more specific than, and was consistent with, other sources of information” the FBI had acquired from other sources, it said.
The FBI said in a letter responding to the report that it accepts the inspection general’s recommendation “regarding potential process improvements for future events.”
The review was launched days after the riot as the FBI faced questions over whether it had missed warnings signs or had adequately disseminated intelligence it had received, including 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 inspector general found that the information in that bulletin was broadly shared.
FBI Director Chris Wray, who announced this week his plans to resign at the end of Biden’s term next month, has defended his agency’s handling of the intelligence report.
Wray told lawmakers in 2021 that the Norfolk field office bulletin 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 the [Metropolitan Police Department] in not one, not two, but three different ways,” Wray said at the time.
Separately, the watchdog report said that the FBI’s New Orleans field office was told by a source between November 2020 and early January 2021 that protesters were planning to station a “quick reaction force” in northern Virginia “in order to be armed and prepared to respond to violence that day in [Washington] DC, if necessary.”
That information was shared with the FBI’s Washington Field Office, members of intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement agencies the day before the riot, the inspector general found.
However, there was no indication the FBI told 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 cache of weapons at a Virginia hotel as part of a “quick reaction force” was a central piece of the Justice Department’s seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and other members of the group.
US Representative Clay Higgins recently said on a podcast that agents pretending to be Trump supporters were responsible for instigating the violence.
Former US representative Matt Gaetz in 2021 sent a letter to Wray asking how many undercover agents or informants were at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and if they were “merely passive informants or active instigators.”
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 added that 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.”
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
BORDER SERVICES: With the US-funded International Rescue Committee telling clinics to shut by tomorrow, Burmese refugees face sudden discharge from Thai hospitals Healthcare centers serving tens of thousands of refugees on the Thai-Myanmar border have been ordered shut after US President Donald Trump froze most foreign aid last week, forcing Thai officials to transport the sickest patients to other facilities. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which funds the clinics with US support, told the facilities to shut by tomorrow, a local official and two camp committee members said. The IRC did not respond to a request for comment. Trump last week paused development assistance from the US Agency for International Development for 90 days to assess compatibility with his “America First” policy. The freeze has thrown
RSS