Washington According to a long-awaited Justice Department inspector general report issued Thursday, the FBI did not take the “basic step” of gathering intelligence from its field offices prior to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
According to the inspector general’s office, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told investigators that the absence of a canvas was a “basic step that was missed” and that he would have expected it to have happened.
The FBI “recognized the potential for violence” and took “significant and appropriate steps” despite having “only a supporting role in preparing for and responding to” the events of January 6, according to the inspector general.
Additionally, the report contains information that would most likely bolster the “fedsurrection” narrative that has been gaining traction on the right and among Trump supporters: the erroneous belief that the attack was initiated by the federal government.
Although there was “no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6,” according to the inspector general’s office, there were 26 anonymous human sources in Washington on that day. None of them had been “authorized by the FBI to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6,” according to the inspector general.
According to the inspector general, four FBI confidential human sources—including one who provided testimony during the Proud Boys trial, in which many members of the far-right group were found guilty of seditious conspiracy—entered the Capitol. According to the IG report, nine of the 13 confidential human sources never reached the Capitol or the restricted area, while 13 of them did enter the area. Out of the 26 FBI confidential human sources, only three had “been tasked by FBI field offices to report on specific domestic terrorism case subjects who were possibly attending the events of January 6,” while the remaining 23 went “on their own initiative and were not tasked by FBI field offices to attend the events,” the report stated.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia stated that it had generally not charged “individuals whose only crime on January 6, 2021 was to enter the restricted grounds surrounding the Capitol, which has resulted in the Office declining to charge hundreds of individuals; and we have treated the CHSs consistent with this approach.” However, none of the FBI informants have been prosecuted in connection with the attack on January 6.
With just over a month left until Trump takes office, thousands of people who were either inside the Capitol building or on its restricted grounds will probably never be charged, even though more than 1,500 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack. The FBI has received the names of hundreds of participants from online detectives, including 93 whose images are on the agency’s Capitol Violence website. The majority of these individuals are wanted for attacking cops on that particular day.
Four years ago, in late 2020 and early 2021, while Trump was trying to avenge his electoral defeat, the events covered in the inspector general’s report took place. The separate, extensive criminal investigation that special counsel Jack Smith conducted into Trump’s attempts to rig the 2020 election caused a delay in its release. In the end, a federal grand jury indicted Trump on four felony charges related to that endeavor; however, Trump was successful in postponing the trial, and Smith pushed to have the charges dropped following Trump’s victory in 2024. A written report on Smith’s investigation is still required.
An NBC News analysis of thousands of pages of FBI papers related to January 6 showed a bureau that struggled with communications and technology and was prevented from having open discussions about the threat environment, which was largely driven by the man in the White House.
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