What Do We Still Not Know About January 6?
TRUMP: “As it now turns out, FBI Agents were at, and in, the January 6th Protest, probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists, but certainly not as ‘Law Enforcement Officials.’”
THE FACTS: This is false. The alleged FBI documents to which Trump is referring state on page 46 that 274 agents from the FBI's Washington Field Office “responded to” to the U.S. Capitol and other nearby locations on Jan. 6. They do not contain any credible evidence to suggest that federal agents were acting as agitators or insurrectionists.
“This number includes agents that responded to the Capitol grounds as well as inside the Capitol, the pipe bombs, and the red truck that was believed to contain explosive devices as well as CDC/ADCs,” the documents read.
The mention of “pipe bombs” refers to the devices planted outside offices of the Democratic and Republican national committees in Washington on the eve of the attack, while “the red truck” refers to a pickup truck filled with weapons and Molotov cocktail components that was parked near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
But what is indisputably new is the information that something like 274 employees of the FBI's Washington Field Office were dispatched to the US Capitol that day, and for whatever reason, the FBI had not previously released this information. How it might be interpreted depends in part on what the meaning of "agents" is. CNN also disputes Trump's version:
As CNN previously reported, no undercover FBI agents were at the Capitol during the January 6 riot, according to a Justice Department watchdog. However, the DOJ inspector general said that 26 paid FBI informants were in Washington, DC, that day.
Well, OK, but the information we've just received is that 274 FBI employees were also purposely sent there. So far, we don't know what their job classifications were, or what they were supposed to be doing, and Trump is asking good questions:
“I want to know who each and every one of these so-called ‘Agents’ are, and what they were up to on that now ‘Historic’ Day. Many Great American Patriots were made to pay a very big price only for the love of their Country. I owe this investigation of ‘Dirty Cops and Crooked Politicians’ to them!” Trump continued.
In fact, the information that was released over the weekend simply expands the set of unknowns connected with January 6. The legacy media interpretation of the 274 "agents" (if that's what they were, we aren't really sure) is that they were sent in at the last minute for crowd control, because they were in offices just down the street, or something like that. But let's look at the situation from the testimony of Steven Sund, Capitol Police Chief on January 6, to the US Senate:
We [the Capitol Police] were monitoring the actions and demeanor of the crowd, which at the time did not raise any concerns, when we received word at 12:52 p.m. that a pipe bomb had been located at the Republican National Committee Headquarters, immediately adjacent to Capitol Grounds. . . . We also dispatched resources to look for other explosive devices, suspects, and vehicles. At almost the exactly same time, we observed a large group of individuals approaching the West Front of the Capitol. When the group arrived at the perimeter, they did not act like any group of protestors I had ever seen. Unlike other heated protests, these protesters did not simply congregate to angrily voice their grievances. As soon as this group arrived at our perimeter, they immediately began to fight violently with the officers and to tear apart the steel crowd control barriers, using them to assault the officers. . . . This mob was like nothing I have seen in my law enforcement career. The group consisted of thousands of well-coordinated, well-equipped violent criminals. They had weapons, chemical munitions, protective equipment, explosives, and climbing gear. A number of them were wearing radio ear pieces indicating a high level of coordination.
This is a little puzzling. "Violent criminals" would normally be street thugs, who aren't well-coordinated. These were apparently both well-trained and well-equipped, and frankly, this doesn't sound like Mr and Mrs MAGA. Earpieces? Climbing gear? Chemical munitions? Sund sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi and other parties on February 6, after the riot:
"Having previously handled two major post-election demonstrations successfully utilizing an action plan that was based on intelligence assessments that had proven to be credible, reliable, and accurate, we reasonably assumed the intelligence assessment for Jan. 6, 2021, was also correct."
On Jan. 4, the Capitol Police Intelligence and Inter-Agency Coordination Division "assessed "the level of probability of acts of civil disobedience/arrests occurring based on current intelligence information," as "Remote" to "Improbable" for all of the groups expected to demonstrate on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021," according to Sund.
But the Justice Department's pursuit of charges against the rioters appears to be at variance with Sund's description of "thousands of well-coordinated, well-equipped violent criminals" who were somehow able to keep their detailed plans from intelligence assessment teams. For instance,
By the end of 2021, 725 people had been charged with federal crimes. That number rose to 1,000 by the second anniversary of the attack, to 1,200 by the third anniversary (three-quarters of whom had by then been found guilty) and to 1,500 before the fourth anniversary.
. . . Early on, the majority of charges filed against the rioters were for disorderly conduct and unlawful entry. Ultimately, about one-third of the defendants were charged with assault on or interference with law enforcement officers. Other charges included trespassing; disrupting Congress; theft or other property crimes; weapons offenses; making threats; and conspiracy, including seditious conspiracy.
All these might apply to Jacob Chansly, the "QAnon Shaman", not disciplined, well-organized brown shirts wearing earpieces:
Chansley, who pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding, was among the first rioters to enter the building. He has acknowledged using a bullhorn to rile up the mob, offering thanks in a prayer while in the Senate for having the chance to get rid of traitors and scratching out a threatening note to Vice President Mike Pence saying, “It’s Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!”
Though he isn’t accused of violence, prosecutors say Chansley, of Arizona, was the “public face of the Capitol riot” who went into the attack with a weapon, ignored repeated police orders to leave the building and gloated about his actions in the days immediately after the attack.
The "weapon" was a stage spear, and Chansly was pretty clearly a harmless nut. The scenes from inside the Capitol were in fact farcical. But we have Sund's testimony in several forums that there were well-coordinated, well-equipped forces involved -- so who were they? Where were they, precisely? Frankly, earpieces are the sort of thing federal agents wear, not wackos in costumes, or indeed just Mr and Mrs MAGA.Sund also brings up the pipe bombs and a truck loaded with explosives. We've heard almost nothing about these. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino has announced that the bureau is revisiting the case.
On the night of Jan. 5, 2021, someone carrying a backpack and wearing a grey-hooded sweatshirt, mask, gloves, glasses, and a pair of Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers dropped two pipe bombs outside Republican and Democratic headquarters in the nation’s capital.
While the explosives did not detonate, the FBI assessed that they were “viable.”
Then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris visited the Democratic National Committee headquarters the next day, shortly before the Capitol riot began, and was evacuated after the pipe bombs were identified by a passerby.
. . . While the explosives did not detonate, the FBI assessed that they were “viable.”
. . . In a House GOP report released in early 2025, lawmakers claimed initial inquiries “yielded a promising array of data and revealed numerous persons of interest” — but “little meaningful progress” has been made since.
Sund suggests that the timing of the pipe bomb discoveries may have been intended to distract the Capitol Police from the incursion on the Capitol grounds, and this would suggest a fairly intricate conspiracy -- so it's intriguing that while there were 1500 people prosecuted for things like trespassing or interfering with law enforcement, there have been no prosecutions, as far as we can tell, of trained, well-equipped, well-financed professionals with climbing gear that Sund testified were on the Capitol grounds.In other words, we still know almost nothing about January 6.
