The FBI is under fire today after a new expose’ revealed that the agency ignored very specific threat warnings that could have prevented the deadly Capitol Hill insurrection on January 6, 2021.
Top News Today
According to a stunning new investigation by The Washington Post, the Federal Bureau of Investigation received multiple highly-detailed tips that Donald Trump’s MAGA sycophants were planning a violent rebellion against certifying the 2020 presidential election — but the FBI dismissed the warnings.
The Post’s investigation included interviews of 230 people and concluded with surprising detail of multiple failures by the federal agency.
As early as December 6th, the FBI received a tip about an online post to Trump supporters, stating: “Please be in DC, armed, on the 6th. You might have to kill the palace guards. Are you okay with [that]?”
Another post referenced killing officers and read: “Drop a handful, the rest will flee.”
In yet another online message, Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney (a Donald Trump nemesis) was specifically targeted with a threat.
On December 19th, Trump himself tweeted a “call to arms” message to his followers to come to Washington, D.C. on January 6th, writing: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
.
The FBI received a call alerting them to Trump supporters making plans online to bring arms to Washington and arrest lawmakers. The Sunday afternoon call was handled by the bureau’s National Threat Operations Center, a clearinghouse for tips about crimes, according to a document titled “Threats to Take Guns and Overrun the DC Police January 4th-January 20th.” The file was updated the following afternoon by an FBI employee seeking to reclassify the information: “More DT [domestic terrorism] than Criminal in nature… Criminal has received a significant number of Guardians as a result of threats to Congress and other government officials.”
The caller, according to the FBI document, said people were “planning on meeting in certain areas and sneaking guns into DC in an attempt to overrun the DC police, beginning January 4th-20th.” On three different sites, “there is discussion about recruitment, where to meet at, bringing guns, and arresting Senators and members of Congress to hold trials outside in public areas.”
.
Interestingly, a separate NBC News report said that the FBI dispatched agents to talk to more than a dozen extremists before the Capitol Hill riot in order to urge them not to attend the planned MAGA melee.
Despite all the evidence, The Post said the FBI closed its internal threat assessment of the matter on December 22nd after concluding that because the planned threats were “vague” and involved “First Amendment-protected speech,” they “did not warrant further investigation at this time.”
Is the FBI correct that the threats fell under the First Amendment’s freedom of speech protections? Is it possible that an inside job involving Trump sympathizers within the agency steered the bureau away from taking action against the threats? Or, did the FBI simply drop the ball in a very big way?
There had to be some Trump people in the FBI for them to ignore all those tips like they did. This has nothing to do with free speech. They did the least effort possible which is how the Trump crowd was able to take over the capital so easy.