New Evidence Reveals Feds Instigated Violence During the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot
More revelations about the federal government’s actions concerning the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol have surfaced, and they could place more scrutiny on the state’s role in the affair. A motion filed by a lawyer representing members of the Proud Boys, a right-wing activist group, indicates that there were a significant number of informants who infiltrated the group.
The motion, which was obtained by American Greatness’ Julie Kelly, noted that FBI informants were “vastly outnumbered” by confidential human sources (CHS) and “plain-clothes operators representing other law enforcement agencies.”
The document notes that “[a]n agency called Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) seems to have played a major role in handling and running CHSs among the Proud Boys on January 6, 2021.”
But even more damning is what the motion says about the behavior of these informants according to bodycam footage. “This new information is plainly exculpatory,” the document reads. “Bodycam videos worn on January 6 by undercover Metropolitan Police officers show the undercover officers cheering on the demonstrators, with chants of ‘Go! Go! Go!,’ ‘Stop the Steal!,’ and ‘Whose House? Our House!’”
“Undercover operatives were planted among the protesters as instigators; not just observers.”
The attorney also points out that there were “at least 10 to 12 additional, previously unknown plain-clothes MPD officers among the Proud Boys on January 6.” This means that there were at least 50 informants who had infiltrated the group on that day.
The fact that law enforcement agencies had infiltrated the Proud Boys and other right-wing groups is not new. But this filing sheds light on the extent to which the government used these informants. In December, the New York Times reported that the FBI “had as many as eight informants inside the far-right Proud Boys in the months surrounding the storming of the Capitol.”
From the report:
In the papers, some of which were heavily redacted, the lawyers claimed that some of the information the confidential sources had provided to the government was favorable to their efforts to defend their clients against sedition charges and was improperly withheld by prosecutors until several days ago.
In a sealed filing quoted by the defense, prosecutors argued that hundreds of pages of documents related to the F.B.I. informants were neither “suppressed” by the government nor directly relevant to the case of the Proud Boys facing sedition charges: Enrique Tarrio, the group’s former leader; Joseph Biggs; Ethan Nordean; Zachary Rehl; and Dominic Pezzola.
If the allegations made by the defense attorney are accurate, it means government agents were actively encouraging the people present at the Capitol building to engage in violence. They were goading these individuals into committing crimes, which is the type of corruption that has been rife in the Bureau since its inception.
Indeed, the FBI has a history of using informants, who are highly paid and often convicts themselves, to infiltrate politically-oriented groups and persuade their members to engage in extremism so that they can get more arrests. Another report revealed that the Bureau ran this same type of operation on activists protesting against police brutality after the murder of George Floyd.
Hopefully, these revelations will aid in the defense of those being charged by the same government that allegedly pushed them to commit crimes. Unfortunately, for many others, it might be too late.
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