Claim: FBI was complicit in Jan 6

Question

In order to protect the country from fictional right-wing "patriot" groups, did the FBI become an insurrectionist "patriot" movement?

Comments

Note: I'd recommend anyone factchecking this to figure out where the Revolver got its information and check that, rather than just Googling (it should mention that in the Revolver article itself).

Answer 1

This is False

Fact check: Claims of FBI role in Jan. 6 Capitol attack are false (yahoo.com)

"FBI operatives were organizing the attack on the Capitol on January 6."

But that theory relies on a false assumption: that anyone identified as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in charging documents is a government agent.

In fact, legal experts say that term cannot be used to describe FBI agents or undercover government operatives."

This is propaganda from far right wing Facebook pages spread by FOX. There is no evidence of this and whatever claims being made are not even applicable to FBI agents.

Comments

1) Revolver's claims aren't dependent upon every unindicted co-conspirator being a government agent.
2) "Legal experts say" is weasel-words, and
3) what possible mechanism, legal or otherwise, would grant "FBI agents or undercover government operatives" immunity from indictment?

Answer 2

This statement is false. There is no evidence that suggests the FBI was complicit in the January 6th insurrections of 2021. According to MotherJones.com, the FBI warned Congress of the right-wing extremist. The author claims the failure to prevent this is on the capital security measures.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/02/the-fbi-warned-congress-of-right-wing-violence-before-jan-6th-capitol-police-leaders-never-saw-the-report/

Comments

1) The lack of evidence is not evidence that a claim is false.
2) The existence of an FBI warning about "right-wing extremists" prior to the event is irrelevant to the claim made by Revolver that the FBI ceased their investigation of these specific perps, removed them from their calls to the public for information on the suspects after the event, and never indicted any of them. In addition, the alleged ignored warning only strengthens the claim that the Capitol Police were somehow restrained from preventing the events of J6.

Answer 3

The Revolver report seems to be true, that there was a conspiracy by several easily-identifiable individuals, including Ray Epps,  who on video, broke many laws as they executed their premeditated Capitol break-in to lead an unsuspecting mob spilling out of the Trump demonstration straight into the Capitol (without any visible sign that it was illegal) and that the FBI cooperated in removing these individuals from their investigations/prosecutions.

(Edit 2023-5-19:) Hearings before the House Judiciary's Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government lend solid evidence to support this claim. "The Washington, D.C. FBI Field Office CONFIRMED that undercover officers, confidential informants, and FBI assets were present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, despite FBI Director Wray testifying to the contrary!" - https://www.newsmax.com/politics/matt-gaetz-fbi-christopher-wray/2023/05/18/id/1120400/

Comments

Where is your evidence? You can't just assume that this article is true without factchecking it.

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The evidence in the Revolver reports (https://www.revolver.news/2021/12/damning-new-details-massive-web-unindicted-operators-january-6/) is all primary evidence, video footage of the perps committing the crimes and communicating with one another while they do so. Therefore the burden of proof is for evidence to show the converse, either that Revolver's footage is fake, or that other primary evidence contradicts it fundamentally.

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Ok, so video evidence: that's a good start, and definately something to include in your explanation (so instead of just saying it "seems to be true," write something like "this fact was discovered through this video footage" and explain what in the footage proved what.  Be specific about the facts that you are discussing.

After that, investigate this primary source. Where did this video evidence come from? Who took the footage? What else can you find about this camera-person?

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No. Video evidence is not a start. It's the end. See my comments above concerning burden of proof. It is up to those who want to label the Revolver report as "false" to show primary evidence to the contrary.

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Any piece of evidence is just a start in factchecking. Video evidence, just like text, can be misleading — it can be video of footage of a different event than what is described in the article, for instance (and in the era of deepfakes, it can even be imaginary.) That's why it's always important to learn who took the video/wrote the words/made the phone call, etc. and determine if that person is trustworthy (or even exists). If that information is hidden, then it's no better than hearing a stranger shout something on the street. They could be right, or they could be making it up. Not strong evidence.

If you want to provide a compelling factcheck, you have to explain what the video showed and what you can find out about the source of the video. Otherwise, it's just blind trust.

The burden of proof is always on the person claiming that something happened, as it's impossible to find evidence that something didn't happen. (For instance, try to prove that there isn't a unicorn floating by Pluto.)

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This is silly. You are displaying an obvious bias against my factcheck. Have you demanded verification of primary evidence cited by any other answerer? Either you have primary evidence to contradict Revolver's report or you don't. If you don't, Revolver's report stands as cited.

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My commenting has nothing to do with whether you are right or wrong. I comment on posts I find interesting, not posts I necessarily agree or disagree with. You may be right — and I'm explaining what proving yourself right would require/look like according to our Community Rules on the right header.

You may find it helpful to look at the "How to factcheck" materials at the top header. Factchecking has certain standards and expectations, and evaluating primary sources is one of the most important pieces of that.

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That's not the way this works. The claim is that "FBI was complicit in Jan 6". Revolver presented very convincing, 1st person footage that the claim is true. If you, or others have evidence to the contrary, then they must present it, otherwise the claim stands.

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Thanks for the enthusiastic commenting and fact-checking @Klugeman. Revolver.com seems to suggest that the FBI is involved in the January 6th incident because they didn't take action against Epps. They don't actually present any evidence that's concrete and really demonstrates a smoking gun. Is there any legitimate sources also presenting this view or with clear proof? Also if the FBI was implicit and the evidence was very powerful, wouldn't there have been more outrage or some type of reaction/coverage? Just thinking out loud...

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@zenyogi - No. It's not just Epps. Revolver documents a whole list of perps, all of whom were videoed on that day committing all of the most egregious of the crimes. The FBI originally posted them as wanted, but they were thereafter withdrawn from the websites. Garland and the DOJ have explicitly refused to answer questions regarding these persons. Is there some other, reasonable explanation, other than the FBI's involvement in the coverup? And if you have not heard any outrage about this and all the other evidence of serious crimes by the Feds, then it only means you need to listen to other information sources. https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/fbi-whistleblowers-abuse-of-power-judiciary/2023/05/15/id/1119887/

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@Klugeman - thanks for your response. While the FBI hasn't been clear on their reasoning for their actions -- maybe there's an internal investigation or something we are unaware of? I really don't know. I'm just saying the evidence isn't as concrete as it could be to rate the claim as a solid "true." Oh yes, I'm aware of NewsMax, but its reliability rating isn't so high, so that's something to consider as well as its political leaning. https://www.biasly.com/sources/newsmax-bias-rating/

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@Zenyogi - You ought to be aware by now that the House is investigating the Fed, due to the elections of 2022, which have allowed it to act somewhat independently from the otherwise totalitarian US regime, and that the Durham report has confirmed virtually all Federal anti-Trump malfeasance. And I didn't cite Newsmax to bolster any particular claim, but rather just to show you that there's indeed a whole world of information outside the regime's echo chamber of disinformation (i.e. the MSM).

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@Zenyogi, @factor, @RStrauss, @SaidNonoal04, @Branand2 - at this point, the "best answer" is still showing as @Branand's, as solid "FALSE", with a single vote, despite the fact that the only thread on the topic, this thread, has concluded that the claim is mostly "TRUE". How does that work?