The report, which was four years in the making, offers a mixed assessment of the FBI's performance in the run-up to the riot, crediting the bureau for preparing for the possibility of violence and for trying to identify known “domestic terrorism subjects” who planned to come to Washington that day.
But it said the FBI, in an action the now-deputy director described as a “basic step that was missed,” failed to canvas informants across all 56 of its field offices for any relevant intelligence. That was a step, the report concluded, “that could have helped the FBI and its law enforcement partners with their preparations in advance of January 6.”
In addition, the watchdog found that 26 FBI informants were in Washington for election-related protests on Jan. 6, and though four entered the Capitol during the riot, none had been authorized to do so by the bureau or to break the law or encourage others to do so. Many of the 26 informants did provide the FBI with information before the riot, but it “was no more specific than, and was consistent with, other sources of information” that the FBI had acquired from other sources.
It wasn't previously clear how many FBI informants were in the crowd that day. Wray refused to say during a congressional hearing last year how many of the people who entered the Capitol and surrounding area on Jan. 6 were either FBI employees or people with whom the FBI had made contact. But Wray said the “notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous.”
