US watchdog cites FBI missteps but avoids blame in report on January 6 riot

The United States Department of Justice has issued a report into the intelligence gathered in the lead-up to the 2021 attack on the US Capitol — and whether that evidence was properly handled to prevent violence.

Thursday’s 88-page report, issued by the office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz, zoomed in on the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), one of the US’s foremost domestic intelligence agencies.

It concluded that the FBI had behaved “effectively” ahead of the attack on January 6, 2021, which sought to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election.

“Despite playing only a supporting role in preparing for and responding to the events of January 6, the FBI recognized the potential for violence and took significant and appropriate steps to prepare for this supporting role,” the inspector general’s office explained.

But, it added, the FBI could have gone further to identify intelligence about potential threats, including by canvassing its field offices for materials, as it does before major events like the Super Bowl.

An uncertain future

The FBI, however, has long come under scrutiny for its actions in the lead-up to the January 6 attack.

And the agency’s future is now in question, as its longtime director, Christopher Wray, prepares to step down after more than seven years at the helm.

Incoming President Donald Trump has long taken an adversarial approach to the bureau, which he has described as part of a “deep state” system designed to undercut his authority.

His nominee to lead the FBI, former prosecutor Kash Patel, has floated shuttering the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC, and significantly reducing its operations.

The report centres on the events of January 6, when Trump, the outgoing president at the time, held a rally near the White House calling on supporters to “stop the steal” of the 2020 election.

He claimed — falsely — that his defeat in the 2020 race was the result of widespread voter fraud.

In the hours afterwards, pro-Trump protesters moved from the Ellipse, a round park south of the White House, to the US Capitol, where members of Congress inside were certifying the election results.

Rioters assaulted law enforcement officers and broke into the Capitol building, some chanting slogans like “Hang Mike Pence”, Trump’s then-vice president. Congress members were evacuated, and one protester was shot and killed as she tried to enter a room through a broken window.

Other deaths have also been linked to the attack. Some protesters suffered medical emergencies during the riot, while several law enforcement officers reportedly killed themselves in the aftermath.

Criticisms and conspiracy theories

What role the FBI played in the lead-up to those events has been the subject of bipartisan scrutiny in the years since.

A June 2023 report from the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee took the stance that the January 6 attack was “planned in plain sight”.

It blamed both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for “intelligence failures” that allowed the attack to unfurl.

“The intelligence failures in the lead-up to January 6th were not failures to obtain intelligence indicating the potential for violence,” that 2023 report argued.

Rather, it accused the FBI and DHS of failing “to fully and accurately assess the severity of the threat” based on the tips they received.

The report added that both agencies had a duty to issue guidance “with sufficient urgency and alarm to enable” law enforcement “to prepare for the violence that ultimately occurred on January 6th”.

Meanwhile, far-right conspiracy theorists have claimed FBI agents helped spur the violence on January 6, to unfairly smear Trump supporters.

Thursday’s report refutes that. No undercover FBI agents were at the protest, the report says.

While there were 26 confidential informants in Washington, DC, for the events of January 6, only three were at the Capitol, according to the report. It specifies they were tasked with observing “specific domestic terrorism case subjects”, nothing more.

“None of these FBI CHSs [confidential human sources] was authorized by the FBI to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6,” the report explained.

“Nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.”

This week’s report also emphasises that the FBI was charged with only a “supporting role” in preparing for the events of January 6.

Rather, it said, law enforcement agencies like the US Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department “were generally responsible for security operations, crowd control, and visitor protection in advance of protests and other demonstrations in and around the Capitol”.

Source