Recent
inquiries about whether FBI
operatives were mixed in among the protesters and intruders who broke into the
United States Capitol on Jan. 6 will more likely uncover the presence of FBI
informants rather than undercover agents, according to Marc Ruskin, a
27-year FBI veteran and former undercover agent who is also an Epoch Times
contributor.
Before he left the bureau in 2012,
there were only about 100 undercover FBI agents in the whole country, Ruskin
told the Epoch Times. Deployment of each requires a lengthy, “very
resource-intensive” operation that needs to be approved on several levels. Even
if there was a top-down operation run by the headquarters underway on Jan. 6,
it would have been unlikely that any significant number of undercover agents
were present, he said.
Informants, on the other hand, would
have been much more convenient, needing only some vetting and an assigned
handling agent. The bureau uses them regularly and they’re not necessarily
aware of each other even if they collect information on the same target, Ruskin
said.
He said that during his tenure he
hadn’t seen the FBI use informants as de facto “agents provocateur” to incite
crimes at a political event, but that he has watched the bureau getting
politicized by its leadership and, particularly in recent years, repeatedly
breaking its own rules.
Recent reports by Revolver
News and other right-leaning outlets have presented a list of clues
that raise questions about the FBI’s involvement in the events of Jan. 6, when
intruders at the Capitol caused a several-hour delay in the certification of
the 2020 presidential election by Congress.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has
since run a “shock and awe” operation against the intruders, slapping them with
charges that threaten decades in prison. Many have been held behind bars
without bail, even placed in solitary confinement. Yet the indictments show
that a number of people that seem to have engaged in similar actions on Jan. 6
have somehow escaped prosecution. It’s not clear why, since it doesn’t appear
to be a consequence of lacking evidence or plea negotiations, based on the
Revolver investigation.
Furthermore, the three organizations
that the DOJ alleges played leading roles in planning illegal activity on Jan.
6 are known to have had FBI informants in their ranks. Several members of the
Three Percenter militia group, which interprets the Constitution as a license
to defy most current federal authorities, were arrested last year for allegedly
planning to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. It turned out FBI informants
and undercover agents played key roles in the alleged plot. One of the alleged
culprits was also a member of Oath Keepers, a militia group that believes
military and law enforcement should defy federal government where it has
overstepped its constitutional mandate. Finally, pro-Western men’s club Proud
Boys, whose members are known to engage in street fights with adherents of the
anarcho-communist Antifa network, has in the past few years been led by Enrique
Tarrio, who was recently revealed as a past FBI informant.
Such groups in general have been
portrayed by the bureau for years as grave potential domestic terrorism
threats.
Jeremy Brown, a former Green Beret and
new member of Oath Keepers, recorded a
December conversation with two men who said they worked with the FBI’s Joint
Terrorism Task Force. The men indicated during the talk that the agency would
be interested in Brown becoming an informant.
“I can’t make any promises but, like,
if you provide information that prevents something big, the government pays for
that,” one of the men told Brown.
Brown said others have contacted him
with similar stories after he went public with his story.
The FBI special agent that oversaw the
Whitmer kidnapping operation was transferred to the FBI’s District of Columbia
office last year, where he is overseeing the Jan. 6 investigations.
As part of its anti-terrorism efforts,
especially after the 9/11 attacks, the FBI has been known to target
individuals in sting operations where its operatives played key
roles. Critics have argued that without the FBI’s involvement, there would
never have been a plot to investigate in the first place.
FBI informants and undercover agents
can be authorized to conduct some illegal activities as part of their
assignments, according to Ruskin.
A Senate investigation into the Capitol
intrusion concluded
that a number of failures in the intelligence apparatus caused the Capitol
Police to be unprepared for what took place. Given the numerous warnings and
assurances of preparedness made before the event, how could this have happened?
“What would be shocking and strange is
not if the FBI had embedded informants and other infiltrators in the groups
planning the January 6 Capitol riot,” commented journalist Glenn Greenwald,
who’s been extensively documenting various questionable activities of the
national security apparatus, in a recent
op-ed. “What would be shocking and strange—bizarre and
inexplicable—is if the FBI did not have those groups under tight control.”
Some lawyers and former FBI officials
have argued that FBI informants wouldn’t be identified in charging documents as
“unindicted co-conspirators” because they would lack the criminal intent
requisite for a conspiracy charge. However, there are several problems with
this argument.
While some individuals that have
escaped prosecution were identified as “unindicted co-conspirators,” some were
identified generically as “Person 1,” “Person 2,” etc.
In some cases, the circumstances could
be more complicated, according to Ruskin. It’s happened in the past, for
example, that an informant was the one inciting the criminal activity he was
supposed to monitor. After all, informants are paid for their services.
Also, potential agents or informants
aren’t necessarily mentioned in the court documents at all.
Independent journalist Bobby Powell caught on
camera two individuals that appeared to engage in illegal activity
by the eastern entrance to the Capitol on Jan. 6. One of them was showing
people inside the building through an open door, Powell said. The other tore a
damaged pane out of a Capitol window and asked Powell why he wouldn’t enter the
building through the broken window. The man also physically intimidated a
protester who tried to push him away from the window. Both individuals Powell
pointed to wore face coverings and some tactical gear. Powell provided his
footage to the FBI, but never heard back. It appears the FBI didn’t even put
out photos of the men to ask the public for help with identification, even
though it did so with hundreds of others. It appears neither individual has been
charged.
The FBI had no comment. When contacted,
it referred The Epoch Times to the bureau’s previous testimony to
Congress regarding Jan. 6.
The FBI and DOJ have in the past been
known to play fast and loose with facts when dealing with perceived political
enemies of its leadership. Notoriously, officials of both repeatedly pushed
falsehoods to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, resulting in illegal
spying on the Trump campaign in 2017 as part of the Crossfire Hurricane
investigation.