FBI report contradicts official's declaration that agency did not have prior intelligence Capitol riot would turn violent
Last Friday, Steven D'Antuono, the head of the FBI's Washington Field Office, said the bureau had "no indication" the deadly riot at the United States Capitol could turn violent. After working "diligently with our partners," he said, the agency determined there was nothing planned "other than First Amendment-protected activity." But an internal FBI document reviewed by The Washington Post suggests otherwise.
A day before a large group of President Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol, an FBI office in Norfolk, Virginia, issued an explicit internal warning after receiving information about "calls for violence" on Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C. The threat was in an online thread, which urged readers to "be ready to fight," adding that "Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their [Black Lives Matter] and [Antifa] slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our president or we die."
An FBI official familiar with the document told the Post on condition of anonymity that officials at the FBI's Washington bureau were indeed briefed on the matter, which another anonymous law enforcement official said suggests the agency's shortcomings were not related to intelligence gathering, but rather the response to the information at hand.
The document did clarify the intelligence was not "finally evaluated," which is why only law enforcement agencies were granted access to its contents, as well as why no action could be taken on "this raw reporting without prior coordination with the FBI." Even still, the findings appear to throw a wrench in the notion that the FBI was caught completely off guard by how events unfolded. Read more at The Washington Post.
More stories from theweek.com
Do Democrats realize the danger they are in?
America's rendezvous with reality
What 'Blue Lives Matter' was always about
