Politics
NEW: Antifa Was Planning ‘Armed Attacks’ During Jan 6 Protest, House Lawmaker Reveals
A number of confidential informants wanted the FBI that there was a strong possibility of “armed” conflict at the Capitol on January 6, but that intelligence was not distributed effectively in order to sure up security ahead of the days events, according to a new disclosure from U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), who chairs the GOP-House led investigation on January 6.
While speaking with Just The News, Loudermilk said he was “floored” by the specificity of threats and the consistency in warnings that multiple confidential human sources provided the FBI. He further noted that the warnings were serious enough to have prompted increased security and possibly even a cancellation of President Donald Trump’s speech at the Ellipse hotel that day.
Loudermilk said the intelligence reports came weeks and days in advance of the Capitol riot from about two dozen informants embedded within “radical groups” around the country, adding that many of those informants came to the Capitol to continue assisting the FBI.
“I was surprised that we found this significant intelligence that was derived from these people embedded in these organizations,” Loudermilk told Just The News editor-in-chief John Solomon. “There is no way that at least the Washington Field Office or the FBI headquarters was not aware that there were elements, not the entire crowd. There were elements of people coming to Washington, DC with the intent of attacking the Capitol of the United States.”
The Georgia lawmaker credited current FBI Director Kssh Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi for giving him access to the intelligence reports of the informants and said that it opened an entirely new avenue of inquiry into whether some elements within the FBI withheld evidence that could have helped Capitol Police better prepare and stress the need for National Guard assistance.
“We’re really having a hard time finding really any tangible reports that were sent to the Capitol Police or other agencies. And so my question is, what did they know? When did they know it, and what did they do with the information?” he said.
“I can tell you unequivocally, they had to know that there was something not only bad going to happen, but the reports coming from these confidential human sources, not just one, but multiple sources from multiple organizations across multiple field offices across the nation, were reporting the same thing,” he added.
Loudermilk stressed that the informants made it clear to the FBI that “not only was there going to be violence in Washington, DC, at the Capitol on January 6, most of the reports were it was going to be a whole lot worse than what actually it turned out to be.”
When pressed further, the Georgia lawmaker said that he is currently waiting on a new trove of documents to be declassified confirming that multiple groups were planning an “armed attack” on the Capitol, lawmakers or law enforcement during the certification of the 2020 election results.
“There were elements, not every group that was there, but there were certain groups that were planning on an armed attack of the Capitol, and even against law enforcement if they got in the way,” he revealed. “And it’s not just isolated. It was, again, from several different places across the United States, and reported to several different field offices.
“One of my concerns about this, and I’m just going to speak from my own self, and one of the, one of the things that I think we need to run down is if they would have passed along this level of intelligence, if they would have shared that level of intelligence, would it had changed the security posture to the extent where President Trump would not have come out and given his speech at the ellipse,” Loudermilk added.
Last year, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog disclosed that the FBI had as many as 26 confidential informants in the crowd on January 6, and that some were passing along warnings about potential violence. Groups like the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers had long been mentioned as the groups in question, though Loudermilk confirmed for the first time Friday that the far-left terrorist group Antifa was behind the planning of armed attacks.
“The answer is yes, there was concerns that Antifa would be embedded within the crowds there,” he said. “There were several references, again, not just isolated to one, but several different field offices, different organizations that were reporting that they had heard that Antifa would be embedded within the crowd.”
FBI officials confirmed to Just the News that their informant did warn of armed conflict and even Antifa, that the reports have now been shared with Congress and that efforts are underway to declassify them, so the public could see the long-hidden warnings.
Loudermilk released footage last year of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) admitting that she should have authorized a National Guard deployment due to the nature of the threats. “There should have been even more security put in place. The National Guard should have been at the Capitol the first time Chief of Police, Steven Sund requested it, just based on that information,” he said.
