An informant for the FBI warned the bureau weeks in advance that January 6th posed a “big” threat of violence, but was ultimately ignored.
The news comes from a previously unreported email uncovered by NBC News which said “far-right” groups were looking at a tweet by former President Trump saying the protest at the Capitol would be “wild” as a “call to arms.”
“Trump tweeted what people on the right are considering a call to arms in DC on Jan 6,” the source reported to the FBI on December 19th.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump tweeted in the early morning hours that day. “Be there, will be wild!”
As evidence that extremists had misconstrued the tweet as a signal for violence, the informant highlighted an uptick in messages speaking of Civil War and a willingness to sacrifice lives.
All of the information was sent to the FBI on the 19th and, as NBC News indicates, “adds to the mounting evidence that the FBI had intelligence warnings that Jan. 6 was a major threat.”
Exclusive: An informant warned the FBI weeks before Jan. 6 that the far-right saw then-President Trump’s tweet summoning his supporters to a “wild” protest in the nation’s capital as “a call to arms,” according to an email reviewed by @NBCNews. https://t.co/YjcCAwVWA2
— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 21, 2022
Informant Warned FBI of January 6 Violence Weeks Earlier
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Perhaps even more alarming than his warning weeks before the January 6th riot was how the informant now views the handling of that information by the FBI and the free pass they’ve received in failing to stop things from getting out of hand.
As The Political Insider has reported, the January 6 committee investigating the events of that day has largely ignored evidence that the FBI and other law enforcement failed to properly prepare.
The FBI had as many as eight informants inside the Proud Boys in the months around the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, recent court papers indicate, raising questions about how much federal investigators were able to learn from them before and after it took place. https://t.co/vfMPExBNW3
— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 14, 2022
The select committee this week released its summary of their investigation focusing predominantly on Trump, rather than the failures of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.
According to NBC News:
The source said they were perplexed by the committee’s efforts to avoid reaching what seemed to them, and to many experts, as an obvious conclusion: that law enforcement failed to adequately respond to the intelligence in its possession ahead of the Jan. 6 attack.
Avoiding the ‘obvious conclusion’ perplexed the source.
“My first response was, like, what the f***?” they said. “The bureau saw this coming.”
They saw it coming and did nothing to stop it. Ask yourself why that might be.
REP. HIGGINS: “Did you have confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters inside The Capitol on January 6th prior to the doors being opened?”
FBI DIR. WRAY: “I have to be very careful about what I can say.” pic.twitter.com/COGkWCPCpY
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 15, 2022
RELATED: McCarthy Tells January 6 Committee to Preserve Their Documents for Coming Investigation
How Many Informants?
It’s one thing to miss something that might not be laid wide out in the open, but it’s another knowing the FBI had at least one informant state specifically that January 6th had the potential of escalating and still couldn’t stop it.
And it gets worse.
Court documents examined by the New York Times show the FBI had as many as eight informants embedded with the “Proud Boys” group in the months leading up to the Capitol riot.
Prior to that, the Times publicized that the FBI had another well-placed informant within the Oath Keepers, another group that allegedly took part in the protest.
Last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he had to “be very careful” about answering questions about whether the bureau had informants dressed as Trump supporters in the crowd.
.@julie_kelly2 Joins @IngrahamAngle To Discuss FBI Director Christopher Wray’s Evasive Testimony In Response To New Revelations That Several Informants Reported To The FBI Leading Up To January 6th pic.twitter.com/bzUZTzfszG
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) November 16, 2022
It isn’t just the information that was buried before the riot either.
Another source tells NBC News that they’re concerned about a coverup by the select committee:
A separate source familiar with the Jan. 6 committee’s work confirmed that the Dec. 19, 2020, tip to the FBI was in the possession of the committee and was among many examples of intelligence the FBI received ahead of the Jan. 6 attack. That source expected that the Dec. 19 tip would be excluded from the Jan. 6 committee’s full report.
If that were to happen, it would be further evidence that the select committee has been little more than a sham, designed exclusively to ‘get Trump.’
The source went on to explain that they had submitted “hundreds of pages of reports over the two weeks proceeding Jan. 6.”
They note that this information didn’t involve random calls to a tip line or submissions through generic web forms. It came directly from a trusted and vetted source.
“This went to an agent directly,” they said. “To me, there’s no excuse to say, ‘We didn’t see this coming.’”
At the end of their report, NBC News reveals that the informant received a thank you for providing information on the potential of violence at the January 6th riot.
“[I]t’s good to be able to help DC get their ducks in a row before anything happens,” an email from the FBI stated.
Now is the time to support and share the sources you trust.
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