US intelligence probing whether FBI involved in 2021 Capitol riot
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Supporters of US President Donald Trump climbing a wall during an assault on the Capitol in Washington on Jan 6, 2021.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
WASHINGTON – The top US spy’s chief of staff on April 9 said the US intelligence community is investigating whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was involved in planning the Jan 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol
“We’re looking into it right now,” Mr Joseph Kent, chief of staff to director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, said during a Senate intelligence committee hearing on his nomination to head the US National Counter-terrorism Centre.
He did not elaborate on which of the 18 US intelligence agencies is conducting the probe. Ms Gabbard oversees the FBI’s intelligence functions.
A US Justice Department watchdog report released in December 2024 debunked claims by far-right conspiracy theorists who alleged that FBI operatives were secretly involved in the Capitol attack.
The report found there were 26 FBI informants in Washington on the day of the attack. But, it said, the FBI did not authorise any to enter the Capitol or engage in violence.
Mr Kent’s comments came in response to questions from Democratic Senator Mark Kelly about the attack by Trump supporters trying to prevent Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.
Mr Trump falsely claimed he lost the contest due to widespread voting fraud. In January, he pardoned more than 1,500 people charged in the assault by a mob of his supporters who stormed the Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to overturn his election defeat.
Mr Kelly asked Mr Kent, a former Green Berets and Central Intelligence Agency officer and staunch Trump loyalist, what evidence he had to back up a post on what is now the social media platform X that the FBI and US spy agencies were involved in planning the assault on Congress.
“We’ve already identified that there were multiple confidential human informants run by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies that were present in the crowd that day, directing, removing barriers, those types of things,” Mr Kelly said. “That has been investigated widely. We continue to look into that intelligence.”
He alleged that the FBI and law enforcement elements that he did not identify “attempted to suppress the fact” informants were among the thousands of rioters.
Information that forewarned of violence indicated that there had been “some degree of intelligence infiltration” of groups who stormed the Capitol, he said.
Mr Kent said that it “probably” was the bureau’s Washington Field Office that was involved and that it was “being looked into” by the intelligence community.
Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Ms Gabbard’s office referred to her announcement on April 8 that a new task force she has formed is “executing” Mr Trump’s executive orders to rebuild trust in the intelligence community “starting with investigating weaponisation, rooting out deep-seated politicisation, exposing unauthorised disclosures of classified intelligence, and declassifying information that serves a public interest”.
Ms Gabbard campaigned for Mr Kent during his failed 2022 run to represent Washington state’s third congressional district.
He was quoted by local media as questioning the validity of Mr Biden’s victory and called the Capitol attack an “intelligence operation”, and rioters charged in the assault “political prisoners”.
Several Democratic senators questioned Mr Kent about his participation in a group chat on the Signal messaging app
The Pentagon’s Inspector General’s Office announced earlier in April that it was opening a probe into Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal to coordinate the strikes. REUTERS
