Latest / Conspiracy! The Show / That Report About January 6th and the FBI
Transcript
- 0:10Speaker 1: Winter insurance that I'm true the troth I'm a chestnut
- 0:14Speaker 1: with insurance. Get true. That is.
- 0:30Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome to Conspiracy The Show. I'm your host,
- 0:35Speaker 2: Adam Todd Brown joining me as co host today Nobody,
- 0:39Speaker 2: I'm all alone, and I'm here to talk to you
- 0:43Speaker 2: about the news story that is at the top of
- 0:47Speaker 2: every conspiracy theory leaning mind in all the land right now,
- 0:52Speaker 2: the new Jersey drones.
- 0:54Speaker 1: No.
- 0:54Speaker 2: I actually covered that last week on the in broad
- 0:57Speaker 2: Daylight podcast, Get It wherever podcast are at. What I
- 1:01Speaker 2: am here to talk to you about today is the
- 1:03Speaker 2: Inspector General's Watchdog report about the FBI and their actions
- 1:10Speaker 2: leading up to and on the day of the January sixth,
- 1:14Speaker 2: twenty twenty one capital riots that dropped last week and
- 1:19Speaker 2: at a svelt eighty eight pages. It's not too labor
- 1:23Speaker 2: intensive of a read. Boring and frustrating in a lot
- 1:26Speaker 2: of parts, but it's not going to take you a
- 1:28Speaker 2: month to get through like those heroes who read all
- 1:32Speaker 2: four hundred pages of the Muller Report. If you want
- 1:34Speaker 2: to read it yourself, all ink to it. In the
- 1:36Speaker 2: show notes. Almost everything I will mention today in terms
- 1:39Speaker 2: of quotes, even just general information comes directly from that report.
- 1:45Speaker 2: The way this is being covered in the media is
- 1:48Speaker 2: kind of frustrating. In one corner, left leaning media outlets
- 1:52Speaker 2: are treating this report as proof positive that conspiracy theorists
- 1:57Speaker 2: are wrong about undercover FBIA agents being the true agitators
- 2:02Speaker 2: behind what happened on January sixth. In the other corner,
- 2:06Speaker 2: right leaning media outlets who are adamant that this is
- 2:10Speaker 2: all the evidence you need to prove their right and
- 2:14Speaker 2: that January sixth was all a big FBI set up
- 2:18Speaker 2: on account of all the FBI informants who were present.
- 2:22Speaker 2: We'll get to the informants versus agents thing later on,
- 2:25Speaker 2: but there's also a third aspect to this report that
- 2:28Speaker 2: some outlets have reported on, which is the idea that
- 2:32Speaker 2: the FBI missed a step in their preparation for January
- 2:36Speaker 2: sixth that could have helped prevent what happened. That part
- 2:40Speaker 2: is worth talking about too. It might even be the
- 2:42Speaker 2: most important finding in this report. You see in the
- 2:45Speaker 2: run up to huge events, including stuff like the Super Bowl,
- 2:49Speaker 2: that FBI will initiate a canvassing of all their confidential
- 2:54Speaker 2: human sources as we're supposed to call paid informants now
- 2:58Speaker 2: to identify possible threats that might be directed toward that event.
- 3:03Speaker 2: For some reason, they did that for almost every post
- 3:08Speaker 2: election event you can think of, including the meeting of
- 3:13Speaker 2: the electors on December fourteenth and the inauguration on January twentieth,
- 3:19Speaker 2: but not for the certification on January sixth. In this report,
- 3:23Speaker 2: FBI Deputy Director Paul Abat calls it a quote basic
- 3:28Speaker 2: step that was missed end quote. And I think it's
- 3:31Speaker 2: actually way more important than that, And I also think
- 3:34Speaker 2: it speaks to what might be the real conspiracy here.
- 3:38Speaker 2: Prior to January sixth, informants had shared all sorts of
- 3:42Speaker 2: information about January sixth with their respective handlers and field offices,
- 3:47Speaker 2: including that extremist members of the Oath Keepers may become
- 3:51Speaker 2: involved in violent activity on January sixth, that the oath
- 3:55Speaker 2: Keeper's contingent heading to DC was two hundred plus people.
- 3:59Speaker 2: They knew the travel plans being discussed by the Proud Boys.
- 4:02Speaker 2: They knew about a separate group of five hundred people
- 4:05Speaker 2: willing to storm the Capitol. One informant related that they
- 4:08Speaker 2: had concerns for the safety of members of Congress on
- 4:12Speaker 2: January sixth. But despite all that, the customary canvassing of
- 4:17Speaker 2: informants never happened, which is a very interesting choice, and
- 4:21Speaker 2: it wasn't just the words of confidential human sources that
- 4:25Speaker 2: should have prompted the FBI to do a little more
- 4:27Speaker 2: prep work prior to the riots. This report also reminds
- 4:31Speaker 2: us that there were two separate Million MAGA March events
- 4:35Speaker 2: in Washington, DC, one on November fourteenth, twenty twenty, the
- 4:38Speaker 2: other on December twelfth, twenty twenty, and that things got
- 4:42Speaker 2: kind of violent at both of those events. Also, the
- 4:45Speaker 2: report also mentions an FBI system called Guardian that's used
- 4:49Speaker 2: to keep track of tips that they receive. At the
- 4:52Speaker 2: end of the report, there's an appendix that include sixteen
- 4:55Speaker 2: different Guardian system tips that the FBI received pre January sixth,
- 5:00Speaker 2: and I don't know. The tips all seem pretty specific
- 5:03Speaker 2: to me and definitely suggest the FEDS should have at
- 5:07Speaker 2: least looked into what might happen a little more, like
- 5:11Speaker 2: one about the Proud Boys and their leader, Enrique Tario
- 5:14Speaker 2: that says, quote, these men are coming for violence. They
- 5:17Speaker 2: will cause mass unrest, destruction, and potentially kill many people
- 5:22Speaker 2: in the streets of DC on January sixth end quote
- 5:26Speaker 2: or another that said bring food and guns. If they
- 5:29Speaker 2: won't listen to our words, they can feel our led,
- 5:32Speaker 2: come armed end quote. And then one more January sixth,
- 5:37Speaker 2: we burn the place to the ground, leave nothing behind
- 5:41Speaker 2: end quote. And granted these are all mostly social media
- 5:43Speaker 2: posts and such, but there are enough of them just
- 5:46Speaker 2: in this report to suggest that someone should have had
- 5:50Speaker 2: some idea that something was coming. I want to reiterate.
- 5:53Speaker 2: It's mentioned at various points throughout the report that the
- 5:57Speaker 2: FBI issued all of the customary requests for information and
- 6:01Speaker 2: did all of the other customary FBI things for a
- 6:05Speaker 2: bunch of post election events like the meeting of the
- 6:08Speaker 2: electors on twelve to fourteen, various court cases, the inauguration,
- 6:13Speaker 2: but they didn't do it for the certification of the election.
- 6:16Speaker 2: There are details about several meetings or email chains where
- 6:21Speaker 2: the matter was discussed, but for this one post election activity,
- 6:26Speaker 2: the one that people online were talking about traveling to
- 6:29Speaker 2: and carrying out assorted acts of aggression, they didn't take
- 6:34Speaker 2: that step. The refusal to do it, at least officially,
- 6:37Speaker 2: seems like it came down to a matter of the
- 6:39Speaker 2: tips not including enough specific details or threats. At one point,
- 6:45Speaker 2: someone from the Washington Field Office complains about the abundance
- 6:50Speaker 2: of information they're getting and the lack of specifics. Here's
- 6:54Speaker 2: a quote. If there are no specifics, why are we
- 6:57Speaker 2: stating violence is an issue? End quote? And another lastly,
- 7:01Speaker 2: while there is a better way to tactfully say it,
- 7:03Speaker 2: if your reporting says or does not identify any violence threat,
- 7:08Speaker 2: criminal activity, then why is it being reported? End quote?
- 7:12Speaker 2: So basically, reports about potential violence on January sixth we're
- 7:16Speaker 2: met mostly with SaaS, which is weird because in the
- 7:20Speaker 2: case of the certification and the Trump rally that coincided
- 7:23Speaker 2: with it, there was zero mystery around when either of
- 7:26Speaker 2: those things were going to happen. And there's only so
- 7:29Speaker 2: many ways to disrupt the government function happening inside the capital.
- 7:34Speaker 2: You're going to have to get a lot of people
- 7:37Speaker 2: inside the capital. How much more specific do you need
- 7:40Speaker 2: this information to be? One interesting moment in the report
- 7:44Speaker 2: pertains to the discussions about whether the Department of Defense
- 7:47Speaker 2: or Department of Justice should take the lead in the
- 7:50Speaker 2: event of unrest. You might remember we covered a documentary
- 7:54Speaker 2: recently called Wargame, about a wargame exercise centered around another
- 8:00Speaker 2: other January sixth type event, happening in the future, and
- 8:03Speaker 2: a lot of the talk when it came to calling
- 8:06Speaker 2: in the National Guard in that documentary was optics. And
- 8:10Speaker 2: sure enough, when the DOJ and DoD are going back
- 8:14Speaker 2: and forth about who should take the lead in the
- 8:16Speaker 2: case of unrest leading up to January sixth, the Department
- 8:19Speaker 2: of Defense's main concern is that they quote didn't want
- 8:22Speaker 2: it to look like a militarized event, a militarized society
- 8:26Speaker 2: end quote. So they're having all of these meetings with
- 8:29Speaker 2: the various agencies, and the FBI keeps talking about no
- 8:33Speaker 2: specific or credible threats, and then, as if by magic,
- 8:37Speaker 2: on literally the eve of the certification January fifth, higher
- 8:43Speaker 2: ups within the FBI finally start getting the sinking feeling
- 8:47Speaker 2: that January sixth was going to be a bigger problem
- 8:50Speaker 2: than they expected. And what's crazy is that it's mentioned
- 8:54Speaker 2: that this change in attitude was based on quote a
- 8:57Speaker 2: number of factors, including the angry rhetoric about the election
- 9:02Speaker 2: results and the fact that Trump would be speaking at
- 9:05Speaker 2: the Ellipse, as well as the domestic terrorst suspects who
- 9:08Speaker 2: would be traveling, and the crowd size end quote. These
- 9:12Speaker 2: are pretty much all things that at least the FBI
- 9:15Speaker 2: knew about well before the evening of the fifth, at
- 9:18Speaker 2: least according to this report. As for the angry rhetoric,
- 9:21Speaker 2: that's the thing the entire country had known about for months,
- 9:24Speaker 2: but somehow the FBI didn't connect all those dots until
- 9:28Speaker 2: January fifth. That seems unthinkable to me. I don't know
- 9:32Speaker 2: that there was anything nefarious behind the decision to not
- 9:36Speaker 2: take this canvassing step in relation to January sixth, but
- 9:39Speaker 2: if you read this report, it's pretty clear that the
- 9:42Speaker 2: agency could stand to be I don't know, streamlined a
- 9:46Speaker 2: little bit maybe if I'm reading it correctly. Getting the
- 9:49Speaker 2: ball rolling on that canvassing thing would essentially just involve
- 9:54Speaker 2: sending an email. You send an email to your field offices.
- 9:57Speaker 2: You tell them, hey, ask all your confidential human sources
- 10:01Speaker 2: if they have any information about people traveling to Washington,
- 10:06Speaker 2: DC to tear shit up on January sixth, send all
- 10:09Speaker 2: that information to us. That's it. That to send an email.
- 10:12Speaker 2: Unless I'm completely missing some highly technical and complicated step
- 10:18Speaker 2: buried somewhere in this report that I read every damn
- 10:21Speaker 2: page of it seems like they just have to send
- 10:24Speaker 2: an email and there are what seems like two months
- 10:27Speaker 2: worth of meetings and email chains about whether or not
- 10:32Speaker 2: they should send that email. Just send the fucking email,
- 10:36Speaker 2: all right, Damn. At this point in the notes, I
- 10:39Speaker 2: was forty seven pages deep into this report, and it
- 10:42Speaker 2: felt like most of it was just descriptions of meetings
- 10:45Speaker 2: about whether to issue this one request for information. Meanwhile,
- 10:50Speaker 2: within three hours after the riots, the FBI did finally
- 10:54Speaker 2: issue a request to field offices to quote canvas all sources,
- 10:59Speaker 2: including confidential, human sources, liaison and technical end quote, and
- 11:05Speaker 2: it provided two questions that should be asked of those sources. One,
- 11:09Speaker 2: do you have any information about quote the perpetrators of
- 11:13Speaker 2: any criminal acts end quote at the Capitol? And two
- 11:17Speaker 2: do you know of any plans to commit further violent
- 11:19Speaker 2: criminal activity in Washington, DC or any other threats to
- 11:23Speaker 2: federal facilities or other property? And how hard was that?
- 11:27Speaker 2: The thing they debated doing tirelessly in the run up
- 11:32Speaker 2: to January sixth, took three hours to accomplish after the fact. Again,
- 11:36Speaker 2: it's probably not a nefarious thing, but it's also not
- 11:39Speaker 2: a good thing. And I do find it highly interesting
- 11:43Speaker 2: that this was the one post election event they decided
- 11:47Speaker 2: to not hit up confidential informants about I don't think
- 11:50Speaker 2: I knew December fourteenth is the day the electors meet
- 11:53Speaker 2: until this election. But the FBI viewed that event in
- 11:56Speaker 2: twenty twenty as enough of a risk to warrant seeking
- 12:00Speaker 2: further information to fend off any potential threats. But the
- 12:03Speaker 2: certification not so much. It's weird. It's weird as all.
- 12:07Speaker 2: Even weirder, the report says, after the fact, the FBI
- 12:11Speaker 2: started saying they did do that canvassing. I feel like
- 12:15Speaker 2: that's a detail I'm not seeing in a ton of
- 12:17Speaker 2: the reporting around this. But in the days after January sixth,
- 12:21Speaker 2: the FBI started getting a lot of questions about a
- 12:24Speaker 2: possible lack of preparedness on their part. In response, they
- 12:29Speaker 2: issued a nine page chronology document called FBI's Planning, Coordination
- 12:35Speaker 2: and Response to US Capital Breach. Under the section labeled
- 12:39Speaker 2: pre January sixth, twenty twenty one Coordination Summary Overview, there's
- 12:44Speaker 2: a bullet point that says the agency quote canvassed all
- 12:48Speaker 2: FBI field offices to review their pending investigations to determine
- 12:52Speaker 2: whether any of their subjects posed a threat to the
- 12:56Speaker 2: upcoming electoral certification and presidential inauguration end quote, and requested
- 13:02Speaker 2: their field offices to another quote, canvass their confidential human
- 13:06Speaker 2: sources for any reporting regarding the potential for violence at
- 13:12Speaker 2: such events end quote. But as this report makes clear,
- 13:16Speaker 2: they very much did not do that. That they said
- 13:19Speaker 2: they did when they didn't is portrayed in this report
- 13:22Speaker 2: as kind of an oopsie or a misunderstanding, But I
- 13:26Speaker 2: don't know. Read it and decide for yourself. This oversight
- 13:30Speaker 2: gets even harder to understand when you get to the
- 13:33Speaker 2: section in the report labeled several FBI field offices obtained
- 13:37Speaker 2: intelligence from confidential human sources related to January sixth, some
- 13:42Speaker 2: of which was not adequately shared with the Washington Field office,
- 13:46Speaker 2: or if shared, not adequately followed up on by the
- 13:49Speaker 2: Washington Field Office. That is a snappy title and one
- 13:53Speaker 2: that summarizes one of the longest sections of this report perfectly.
- 13:58Speaker 2: Various FBI field offices did receive relatively specific information about
- 14:04Speaker 2: threats to the certification, and a lot of that information
- 14:08Speaker 2: either did not get to the office in DC that
- 14:11Speaker 2: needed it the most, or it wasn't acted on when
- 14:14Speaker 2: it did arrive. Some of the concerns centered around Oathkeeper's
- 14:18Speaker 2: founder Stuart Rhodes, who ended up being charged with seditious
- 14:22Speaker 2: conspiracy over his role in the Capitol riots. As early
- 14:25Speaker 2: as September twenty twenty, there were field offices gathering details
- 14:29Speaker 2: about Roads and his plans to commit acts of violence
- 14:33Speaker 2: in the name of supporting Trump. By November, there was
- 14:37Speaker 2: talk about said acts of violence taking place in DC
- 14:40Speaker 2: by way of quote an armed force which could potentially
- 14:45Speaker 2: protect or take back the White House should there be
- 14:48Speaker 2: an attempt to remove the current administration end quote, and
- 14:52Speaker 2: that another quote, Roads anticipates receiving some sort of approval
- 14:57Speaker 2: or request from the current imstration before he and Oathkeepers
- 15:02Speaker 2: would initiate any violent action end quote. But also, no
- 15:07Speaker 2: one needed confidential informants to be hip to what Rhodes
- 15:10Speaker 2: was planning, because he also posted the following statement on
- 15:14Speaker 2: the oath Keeper's public website. Here goes, we must all
- 15:18Speaker 2: march on Washington, DC and directly back up and defend
- 15:21Speaker 2: President Trump as he fights against the ongoing coup that
- 15:26Speaker 2: is attempting to steal the election. Start rolling towards DC
- 15:30Speaker 2: now end quote. The Inspector General's report confirms that the
- 15:34Speaker 2: FBI was aware of these and other website posts that
- 15:38Speaker 2: were similar in nature, and I don't know, I think
- 15:41Speaker 2: on the basis of that alone, you send that canvassing email,
- 15:45Speaker 2: just like you did with everything else. Post election. Rhodes
- 15:49Speaker 2: was so open about his plans that one field office
- 15:52Speaker 2: wanted to open a domestic terrorism case against him based
- 15:56Speaker 2: on potential violations of the Seditious Conspirac Statute, the exact
- 16:01Speaker 2: thing he was eventually charged with. In December, the same
- 16:05Speaker 2: field office reported that Rhodes was recruiting Oath Keepers members
- 16:09Speaker 2: to travel with him to DC for the events of
- 16:12Speaker 2: January sixth, and that they were quote very concerned that
- 16:16Speaker 2: extremist members of Oath Keepers or other groups may become
- 16:21Speaker 2: involved in unplanned violent activity on January sixth end quote.
- 16:26Speaker 2: Somehow these reports were never emailed to the Washington Field office. Again,
- 16:32Speaker 2: it's just an email. There was also information coming in
- 16:35Speaker 2: about the Proud Boys and their leader, Enrique Tario that
- 16:40Speaker 2: was similarly alarming, and again a lot of it was
- 16:43Speaker 2: never communicated to the Washington Field Office. There are pages
- 16:47Speaker 2: and pages and pages of this report that are all
- 16:52Speaker 2: about the information and warnings that were coming into these
- 16:56Speaker 2: field offices from confidential informants that never gets reported. To
- 17:01Speaker 2: the Washington office, and that's definitely a failure on the
- 17:04Speaker 2: part of those field offices. But at the same time,
- 17:07Speaker 2: if that canvassing request was sent out, the Washington Field
- 17:11Speaker 2: office probably would have gotten that information. So now let's
- 17:15Speaker 2: talk about the two parts of this report that are
- 17:17Speaker 2: getting the most attention. Up First, the part that left
- 17:20Speaker 2: leaning media is amplifying the most, which is the part
- 17:23Speaker 2: about how the FBI did not have any undercover employees
- 17:27Speaker 2: at the Ellipse, on the National Mall or at the
- 17:30Speaker 2: Capitol on January sixth. That's actually the title of the
- 17:34Speaker 2: section about it. It's a really short section, literally two
- 17:38Speaker 2: paragraphs that say there's no evidence the FBI had undercover
- 17:42Speaker 2: agents or employees at the Capitol that day. And I'm
- 17:47Speaker 2: going to be honest, my first thought upon hearing that
- 17:49Speaker 2: wasn't the conspiracy theorists are wrong? My first thought upon
- 17:54Speaker 2: hearing there were no undercover FBI agents in the crowd
- 17:58Speaker 2: on January sixth was why not? Well, as it turns out,
- 18:02Speaker 2: the FBI forbids having undercover agents at quote First Amendment
- 18:06Speaker 2: protected events absence some investigative authority end quote. Was that
- 18:11Speaker 2: abundance of reports both online and from confidential informants that
- 18:16Speaker 2: the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys both had plans to travel
- 18:20Speaker 2: to DC to tear shit up, Not enough to warrant
- 18:23Speaker 2: some sort of investigation. Apparently not, because the report also
- 18:27Speaker 2: says an FBI field office asked the Washington Field office
- 18:31Speaker 2: if they could send an undercover agent, and the request
- 18:35Speaker 2: was denied. I personally don't think this is the great
- 18:39Speaker 2: exoneration and debunking of all conspiracy theories around January sixth,
- 18:46Speaker 2: that it's being treated as, and you know, i'd say
- 18:49Speaker 2: it if I did, But so much of what the
- 18:52Speaker 2: FBI does involves informants as opposed to agents themselves, and
- 18:57Speaker 2: there are plenty of informants on hand and at the Capitol.
- 19:01Speaker 2: That's the part the right leaning outlets are currently howling about.
- 19:05Speaker 2: There were twenty six informants there. In fact, that includes
- 19:09Speaker 2: two who were sent there by their respective field offices
- 19:13Speaker 2: and a third whose field office asked them to report
- 19:17Speaker 2: on what they saw after he notified them he was
- 19:20Speaker 2: traveling to DC. The other twenty three went there on
- 19:24Speaker 2: their own. Thirteen of them told their respective FBI handlers
- 19:28Speaker 2: that they were making the trip, ten others did not.
- 19:31Speaker 2: It stated all throughout this section of the report, that quote,
- 19:35Speaker 2: no FBI confidential human source was authorized to enter the
- 19:40Speaker 2: capital or a restricted area or to otherwise break the
- 19:45Speaker 2: law on January sixth, Nor was any confidential human source
- 19:50Speaker 2: directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal
- 19:54Speaker 2: acts on January sixth. End quote. That's pretty interesting when
- 19:59Speaker 2: you couple it with this quote. Here goes. Of the
- 20:02Speaker 2: twenty six confidential human sources who were in DC for
- 20:06Speaker 2: the events of January sixth, the records we reviewed showed
- 20:09Speaker 2: that four entered the capital on January sixth, thirteen entered
- 20:14Speaker 2: the restricted area, and nine attended January sixth events, but
- 20:18Speaker 2: did not enter the capitol or a restricted area or
- 20:22Speaker 2: otherwise engage in illegal activity. End quote. And Okay, so
- 20:27Speaker 2: what about the ones who did. Of the three that
- 20:29Speaker 2: were officially sent there by their handlers, two entered that
- 20:33Speaker 2: restricted area and one of them entered the capital. That's
- 20:36Speaker 2: in addition to three other informants who we've also been
- 20:42Speaker 2: told entered the capitol as well. I don't know, my
- 20:45Speaker 2: people on the left, do we not want any additional
- 20:48Speaker 2: details at all about this part. Here's some interesting math
- 20:52Speaker 2: that probably means nothing, but four informants entered the Capitol,
- 20:57Speaker 2: and a fifth who was sent there by their fi
- 21:00Speaker 2: BI field office or handler whatever, entered the restricted area
- 21:04Speaker 2: but not the building itself. So that adds up to five, right.
- 21:09Speaker 2: I don't have a calculator on hand, but that feels correct,
- 21:11Speaker 2: as coincidence would have it. That is the exact number
- 21:15Speaker 2: of informants that the Washington Field Office knew would be there.
- 21:19Speaker 2: The report says, if one field office officially sends an
- 21:23Speaker 2: informant to another field office's area, they have to tell
- 21:26Speaker 2: that field office that they're sending them, But if that
- 21:29Speaker 2: informant is traveling to the area of their own volition,
- 21:32Speaker 2: there's no such requirement on the part of the field office. Nevertheless,
- 21:36Speaker 2: one Loan field office that knew of two informants traveling
- 21:41Speaker 2: to DC did notify the Washington Field Office how many
- 21:46Speaker 2: of them entered the capital. Was it both of them?
- 21:49Speaker 2: I sure hope not, because that would mean that of
- 21:52Speaker 2: the four confidential human sources present that day who did
- 21:56Speaker 2: enter the Capital, the Washington Field Office knew all four
- 21:59Speaker 2: of them were coming. I honestly wish this report had
- 22:03Speaker 2: an agent I could chat with or something, and by
- 22:06Speaker 2: that I mean a customer service agent who will immediately
- 22:09Speaker 2: answer my questions like when you're shopping for car insurance
- 22:12Speaker 2: and whatnot. Because this report does not address how many
- 22:17Speaker 2: of the five informants the Washington Field Office knew about
- 22:22Speaker 2: entered the Capitol, and that feels like a huge oversight
- 22:25Speaker 2: to me, because if it's four out of five, that
- 22:28Speaker 2: feels like a smoking gun sort of thing. It's one
- 22:32Speaker 2: thing if just that one informant who entered the building
- 22:35Speaker 2: was joined by three others randomly, but if all four
- 22:38Speaker 2: happened to be four of the five the FBI knew about,
- 22:40Speaker 2: that strikes me as a much bigger deal. Unfortunately, again,
- 22:44Speaker 2: that's not addressed in the report. After the paragraph about
- 22:47Speaker 2: how the Washington Field Office knew about five confidential human
- 22:51Speaker 2: sources traveling to DC, the report moves into recommendations for
- 22:54Speaker 2: how the FBI can do better next time, and a
- 22:57Speaker 2: response letter from the FBI that mostly boils down to
- 23:01Speaker 2: them pointing out all the things the report says they
- 23:04Speaker 2: did right and saying they don't agree with bad stuff
- 23:06Speaker 2: and they'll consider fixing things in the future. So at
- 23:10Speaker 2: least justice has served on that front. At this point.
- 23:13Speaker 2: I'm not sold on the idea that this report is
- 23:16Speaker 2: smoking gun proof that the FBI was instrumental in ster
- 23:20Speaker 2: and shit up on January sixth, any more than I
- 23:23Speaker 2: am that it's conclusive proof that there's nothing at all
- 23:27Speaker 2: to see here when it comes to their actions that day.
- 23:30Speaker 2: If it is somehow confirmed that the four informants who
- 23:33Speaker 2: entered the Capitol were all among the group of five
- 23:37Speaker 2: that Washington knew was coming, then we're getting a little
- 23:39Speaker 2: closer to this feeling like something way bigger to me.
- 23:42Speaker 2: Until then, if nothing else, I can definitely see this
- 23:45Speaker 2: being a let it happen because it will benefit us
- 23:49Speaker 2: kind of thing. Though it's mentioned at one point in
- 23:51Speaker 2: this report, and I mentioned it earlier in the pod,
- 23:54Speaker 2: that a field office wanted to open a domestic terrorism
- 23:57Speaker 2: case against oath Keeper's founder, Stuart ro Roads, over potential
- 24:01Speaker 2: seditious conspiracy charges. That effort eventually failed because it was
- 24:05Speaker 2: deemed the FBI didn't have sufficient evidence to pursue it. Well.
- 24:10Speaker 2: One of the unfortunate facts when it comes to a
- 24:12Speaker 2: huge national emergency type of incident like January sixth, is
- 24:16Speaker 2: that a lot of times someone somewhere along the way
- 24:20Speaker 2: benefits from it somehow, Like how nine to eleven made
- 24:24Speaker 2: the Bush administration's foreign policy goals way easier to accomplish,
- 24:29Speaker 2: or how Pearl Harbor gave elements within the US government
- 24:32Speaker 2: and military who desperately wanted to enter World War two
- 24:36Speaker 2: all the reason they needed, even natural disasters, and with
- 24:40Speaker 2: someone being paid to fix and rebuild things, you know,
- 24:44Speaker 2: along those lines. The FBI didn't have sufficient evidence to
- 24:48Speaker 2: pursue Stuart Rhodes and his ILK as domestic terrorists before
- 24:53Speaker 2: January sixth, but they sure as hell did after that day.
- 24:57Speaker 2: It's worth noting that part of the FBI's Lukewar response
- 25:00Speaker 2: in the lead up to January sixth has to do
- 25:03Speaker 2: with the Department of Homeland Security failing to designate the
- 25:06Speaker 2: certification of the election as a national security event. If
- 25:10Speaker 2: they'd done that, the Secret Service would have been responsible
- 25:14Speaker 2: for event security and the FBI would have been the
- 25:17Speaker 2: lead law enforcement agency on the intelligence collection side of things. Instead,
- 25:22Speaker 2: because the Department of Homeland Security didn't issue that designation,
- 25:26Speaker 2: these responsibilities fell to a combination of the Capitol Police,
- 25:31Speaker 2: the Metro PD, and the US Park Police, some of
- 25:35Speaker 2: the first names that come to mind when conducting the
- 25:38Speaker 2: kind of intelligence and security operation needed to put down
- 25:42Speaker 2: a potential insurrection. Honestly, that part seems as scandalous to
- 25:47Speaker 2: me as anything else in this report. Secret Service is
- 25:50Speaker 2: a law enforcement agency that exists under the Department of
- 25:54Speaker 2: Homeland Security umbrella, So designating this as a national security
- 25:58Speaker 2: event would have meant that they'd have to be involved
- 26:01Speaker 2: in stopping the violence, as opposed to, you know, helping
- 26:04Speaker 2: investigate the people who carried out the violence afterward. By
- 26:08Speaker 2: the end of January twenty twenty one, the FBI had
- 26:11Speaker 2: opened more than four hundred case files and issued more
- 26:15Speaker 2: than five hundred subpoenas and search warrants related to the riots.
- 26:20Speaker 2: As of right now, more than fifteen hundred people have
- 26:24Speaker 2: been charged with federal crimes. According to the Inspector General's report,
- 26:28Speaker 2: Though the three informants tasked with traveling to DC on
- 26:31Speaker 2: January sixth, one of whom entered the capital that day
- 26:34Speaker 2: a clear violation of laws they were instructed not to break,
- 26:37Speaker 2: are not among those fifteen hundred go figure. But I'm
- 26:41Speaker 2: sure we'll learn all about them and what they got
- 26:44Speaker 2: up to inside the capital someday. Until then, that concludes
- 26:49Speaker 2: this deep dive into the Inspector General's watchdog report about
- 26:53Speaker 2: the FBI and the January sixth Riots. And hey, thanks
- 26:57Speaker 2: for listening to the pod. Go to Patreon dot COM's
- 27:00Speaker 2: slash on pops or you don't pod dot supercast dot com.
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- 27:09Speaker 2: the show a good review on Apple Spotify if you're
- 27:11Speaker 2: so inclined. And thanks everybody, I love you.