On April 26, Reuters popped an exclusive regarding the January 6 insurrection. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI director Christopher Wray expressed frustration that the Bureau had failed to infiltrate the Proud Boys satisfactorily. Not so much, the Reuters story reported.
The FBI had deeper insight into the group than Wray disclosed, however. Bureau agents maintained connections with key Proud Boys leaders starting as early as 2019, a Reuters examination has found. At least four Proud Boys have provided information to the FBI, Reuters learned. Often these leaders were sharing intelligence about Antifa, a loose movement of left-wing activists opposed by former President Donald Trump and right-wing media.
Oops.
Which is not an adequate answer for Senate Judiciary chairman Richard Durbin, which is pretty much what he told Wray in a letter that he released on Monday to the media.
I appreciate your acknowledgment that the FBI is “focused very, very hard on how can we get better sources, better information, [and] better analysis.” According to recent reports, however, the FBI did have sources in the Proud Boys before January 6. Starting as early as 2019, at least four Proud Boys reportedly provided information to the FBI, including a self-described Proud Boys organizer and “thought leader” whose court filings indicate that in July 2020 the FBI asked him to share information on Antifa networks — and who told a reporter two days before the Capitol attack that he would tell his FBI contact about his plans for January 6 if asked…
…One member of the Proud Boys has indicated in court filings that he regularly informed FBI personnel about Proud Boys activities in Portland, Oregon, “to ask for advice on planned marches or demonstrations, i.e., what march routes to take ... where to go, where not to go,” and that he had similar discussions with the FBI about Proud Boys events in other cities. Did the FBI ask its Proud Boys sources about their plans for January 6. If not, why not?
The investigation into the events of January 6 is all pear-shaped at this point, at least according to Forbes, all tangled in the politics of Congress and Christ alone knows what else, and now the Senate Judiciary chairman and the FBI director are crossways with each other.
Tensions between lawmakers of both parties and law enforcement have become exacerbated in recent weeks. Republicans clashed with the FBI last week over their designation of the 2017 congressional baseball shooting as a “suicide by cop,” which they allege was politically motivated. House Democrats have raised concerns about a radio transmission from a top Capitol Police officer warning of “anti-Trump” counterprotesters during the attack as a sign law enforcement was, at best, unprepared.
The shooting at the congressional softball practice happened four years ago. It has as much to do with January 6 than the events of the Council of Chalcedon do. And if the Reuters reporting is correct, the FBI chose to use the truly dangerous Proud Boys as intelligence assets against the largely amorphous Antifa threat, a miscalculation that could prove to be, in retrospect, as bad an idea as the Bureau’s use of Whitey Bulger as an informant in Boston—if vastly less corrupt a bargain. There will be no “9/11-style” commission. Congressional probes will be forever hamstrung by the thin margins held by the Democrats in Congress, and the apparently limitless appetite the Republicans have for foot-dragging, distractions, and politically useful phantoms. Our government was attacked, and it can’t get itself together to investigate an attack on itself. This is almost too bizarre for government work.
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