WASHINGTON: FBI Director Kash Patel spoke with Fox News on Saturday to directly contradict a social media post made by President Donald Trump concerning the FBI’s role in the January 6th riot at the US Capitol.
President Donald Trump claimed in a Truth Social post on Saturday that the FBI had secretly sent 274 agents “into the crowd” before and during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, reviving a conspiracy theory that has circulated on social media for years.
Trump’s post asserted that the FBI agents were placed in the Jan. 6 crowd and suggested they acted as “agitators and insurrectionists.” He accused former FBI Director Christopher Wray of misleading Congress and demanded the names of the agents he claimed were present.
Trump’s statement echoed longstanding allegations among some of his supporters that federal operatives helped instigate the violence, a claim repeatedly rejected by investigators.
Hours later, FBI Director Kash Patel publicly contradicted Trump in an interview with Fox News, saying that while hundreds of agents were indeed deployed in Washington that day, they were sent only after the riot had already been declared and were not embedded in the crowd beforehand.
Patel said that agents were mobilized for “crowd control and emergency response” only after law enforcement formally declared a riot, describing their role as part of a late effort to help secure the Capitol complex.
He stressed that no agents were “pre-positioned” inside the protest crowd prior to the breach and added that, in his view, former director Wray “gave Congress the runaround” on related questions but did not plant undercover operatives.
The Justice Department’s inspector general has previously found no evidence that FBI undercover employees were embedded in the Jan. 6 mob, though it reported that 26 paid informants were present as private citizens and were not authorized to incite violence. Patel cited those findings in rejecting Trump’s description, while also criticizing the FBI’s previous leadership for failing to communicate clearly with lawmakers about the scope of its response.
The threat against former FBI Director Wray is considered consequential as just this week former FBI Director James B. Comey was indicted this week by a federal grand jury in Alexandria on charges of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding, arising from his 2020 Senate testimony regarding Russia-related investigations.
The indictment comes days after former President Trump publicly urged his Justice Department to pursue prosecutions of perceived political opponents, and fired the US Attorney for Eastern Virginia, who believed there was not enough evidence for an indictment.
Trump replaced the US Attorney with his former personal attorney Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience. Halligan secured two indictments by a grand jury and Comey was told to report to court on October 7 for the start of his trial.
