The January 6, 2021, Capitol riot was a watershed event in American political history, which raised alarm about the fragility of American democracy and the dangers of right-wing extremism.

As Donald Trump gave an inflammatory speech insisting that the November 2020 election was “rigged,” legions of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building and tried to break into the congressional chambers as Senators and House members were about to count electoral votes. Five people were killed and scores of police officers were injured, while the Capitol building sustained $30 million in damages.

Liberals blamed Donald Trump and right-wing media for inciting hatred among the rioters, some of whom carried racist signs or called for the killing of Democratic Party politicians like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to support Trump’s efforts to delegitimize the election.

Democratic Party politicians characterized the riot as an “armed insurrection,” an “assault on democracy,” a “dark day of domestic terrorism,” and the worst day for the republic since Pearl Harbor, 9/11 or even the Civil War.

The dominant narrative was reinforced by an 18-month congressional investigation which released an 814-page report, based on interviews with more than 1,000 witnesses and analysis of over one million pages of documents, accusing Donald Trump of engaging in a “conspiracy to overturn the election” and recommending prosecuting him.

“The central cause of January 6^th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” reads the report. “None of the events of January 6^th would have happened without him.”^[1]

This assessment has been disputed by some people, primarily on the political right, who have expressed belief that the January 6^th congressional investigation was heavily politicized and part of a “deep-state conspiracy” designed to undermine Donald Trump that went hand in hand with contrived legal cases against Trump, impeachment hearings, and the Russia Gate hoax.

In this view, the hundreds of people jailed for their involvement in January 6 were political prisoners facing often inhumane prison conditions.^[2] Most of the protesters were peaceful—few had weapons and none utilized them even though it was supposedly a collection of second amendment gun nuts intent on overthrowing the government.

The damage bred by the rioters was exaggerated, with the media spreading false stories, like one, fed to them by an aide to House Speaker Chuck Schumer (D-NY), suggesting that fecal matter had been smeared on the walls of the Capitol.^[3]

The main culprit in triggering the riot was not Trump but the very “deep state” that sought to undermine him, according to this narrative. It was a “Fedsurrection,” as Darren J. Beattie at the conservative Revolver News characterized it, and “single most egregious caught-on-camera intelligence operation in our lifetimes” triggered by “deep-state operatives” whose main purpose was to a) prevent an audit of the 2020 election being proposed by members of congress, b) discredit Trump supporters by painting them as violent extremists; and c) rationalize the adoption of police state measures.^[4]

For Beattie and others sharing his view, proof that the riot was a “Fedsurrection” lay in the double standards of justice seen in the case of Ray Epps, a former Marine Sergeant from Queen Creek, Arizona, who was captured on camera inciting the rioters to break the barricades and giving an incendiary speech the night before.^[5]

Identified by people in the crowd as a “Fed,” Epps had been put on the FBI’s Most Wanted list after January 6, though, curiously, he was removed from that list in July 2021—after he allegedly called an FBI tip line to tell them that he was trying to calm the rioters.

In September 2023, after widespread public outcry, Epps was charged with a single count of disorderly conduct for entering a restricted area of the Capitol building grounds, and in January 2024 was sentenced over Zoom to one year’s probation, $500 in restitution, and 100 hours of community service.

This sentence contrasted with the lengthy prison terms of people who were seen to have played far less of a direct role in coordinating the riot than Epps, including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison even though he was not even in Washington, D.C., during the riot.^[6]

Beattie wrote: “It’s quite curious, isn’t it? This man [Epps] has received the gold-star treatment, despite being the one who led the charge and incited people on January 5^th to storm the Capitol the next day. Why is Ray Epps the only J6 ‘insurrectionist’ whom the federal authorities seem to admire, respect, and protect? This remains one of the great mysteries, and anyone who delves too deep into this question often faces consequences, such as lawsuits, job terminations, or other forms of silencing.”

Besides Epps, Beattie and other proponents of the “Fedsurrection” narrative believe that the delayed police response and failure of government authorities on J6 to respond properly when they knew in advance of the riot is indicative of a wider conspiracy.^[7]

They note that the Capitol police let many of the rioters into the Capitol rather than trying to deter them and incited the riot by firing munitions into what was originally a peaceful crowd. They further note that the area around the Capitol was swarming with Feds, including CIA bomb technicians and dog teams, and that there was a vast presence of FBI informants and provocateurs in the crowd besides Epps^[8] and among the right-wing militia groups accused of starting the riot.^[9]

One of the suspected provocateurs, Sergai Dybynyn, was identified as a Ukrainian neo-Nazi from the Azov Battalion who worked for U.S. intelligence and was photographed with U.S. politicians.

A video found on Twitter shows police throwing concussion grenades into the crowd as a possible act of provocation.

Clay Higgins (R-LA) said the Department of Justice is withholding exculpatory evidence from police videos and audio recordings that reveal hundreds of undercover law enforcement officers were among the protesters at the U.S. Capitol on J6, and helped incite the violence that occurred.

The federal government’s infiltration of the riot groups is seen to fit with a wider pattern by which the FBI has used agent provocateurs to incite violent acts, like a kidnapping plot targeting Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D).^[10]

The head of the Detroit FBI office at the time of this Michigan kidnapping plot, Steven D’Antuono, was significantly put in charge of the Washington D.C. field office a few weeks before J6.

The purpose of the Michigan kidnapping plot appeared to have been the same as J6: trying to manufacture fear in the public about domestic terrorists, resulting in support for higher police and military budgets at the expense of social programs, and discrediting Trump since his supporters were identified as political extremists.^[11]

J6 and the “Strategy of Tension”

I have followed a lot of the news coverage and writings about January 6, spoken with people present at the Capitol riot, read the report of the congressional investigative committee, and followed reporting on Revolver News along with other news-sites that promote the “Fedsurrection” view or challenge the dominant narrative in liberal and left-alternative media (the latter are basically the same).

I share the view of people on the political left who think that Donald Trump is a charlatan with fascist proclivities. The latter is evident in Trump’s rhetoric haranguing alleged Marxists, scapegoating minority groups, and embrace of ultra-nationalist themes.

Trump clearly incited his supporters by delegitimizing the credibility of the election right after the results were announced when, though there are legitimate questions that have been raised, he did not himself have or offer concrete evidence that the election was rigged against him, or that he had actually won. Even his own General Counsel, Matthew Morgan, concluded that any documented cases of voter fraud and irregularities were not proven to have been “sufficient to have changed the overall outcome of the election.”^[12]

Trump additionally a) demonized liberal Democrats and leftists throughout his presidency, fueling a toxic political climate in the U.S., b) encouraged his supporters to come to the Capitol on January 6, saying it was “going to be wild;” and then c) gave an inflammatory speech on the Ellipse south of the White House fence in which he urged people to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”^[13]

Though the congressional investigation was politicized and promoted some misleading claims that made Trump look to be more directly implicated in the riot than he was,^[14] there is ample evidence that Trump was not innocent like his supporters claim and that the right-wing militias supporting him are real extremists^[15] and the potential embers of a fascist movement, as political analysts like Paul Street and Chris Hedges, among others, have warned (General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff characterized the rioters as “a U.S. version of the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party that supported Hitler.”)^[16]

Kevin James Shay’s book, Operation Chaos: The Capitol Attack and the Campaign to Erode Democracy (Random House, 2023) discusses a plot by the Trump campaign coordinated by aide Steve Bannon to create chaos on January 6 in an effort to delay the ratification of the election and ultimately have the House of Representatives vote Trump back to the White House with the support of conservative state delegations.^[17]

As part of this plot, Trump, whose political operation paid more than $4.3 million to J6 organizers, ”tried to pressure state and federal government officials to overturn the results of the election in over 30 phone calls or meetings, according to The New York Times.^[18]

According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post, Bannon had told Trump on December 30 to focus his public efforts and comments on January 6 (the day of the election certification) in an attempt to “kill the Biden presidency in the crib.” Holed up in the Willard hotel across the street from the White House, Bannon, who was convicted on contempt charges for defying the J6 committee subpoena, allegedly phoned congressmen and women on January 5 in an attempt to dissuade them from voting to certify the election, while Trump allies Roger Stone and Alex Jones stirred up a crowd in Freedom plaza.

Still, if Trump were intent on overthrowing the existing government in a coup he would have played a more active role in supporting the J6 riots after his speech on the Ellipse, and his supporters would have been better organized and ready to use any weapons they may have been carrying with them.

A key question lingers as to whether “deep state” forces were intent on capitalizing on the polarized political atmosphere in the U.S. at the time of the 2020 election and growth of right-wing extremism to try and advance their own interests and agenda by helping to trigger or exacerbate the J6 riots.

To me the answer is yes, as I have previously detailed in CovertAction Magazine.

It is important to recognize that the FBI and other intelligence services have, since at least the 1990s, infiltrated far right-wing groups and militias and planted provocateurs in them to incite violence, as it has done in the past with left-wing groups, notably under FBI’s COINTELPRO.^[19]

The purpose of COINTELPRO was to discredit left-wing groups who challenged the existing power structure.^[20]

In infiltrating the right, the FBI aims primarily to advance a “strategy of tension” whose purpose is to create fear of terrorism that will compel the public to suspend rational judgment and support draconian legislation that expands the powers of police agencies like the FBI, CIA and Department of Homeland Security (DHS); benefits the military-police-industrial complex; and erodes constitutional liberties that Americans would otherwise fight to preserve.^[21]

A 2011 study published by Rutgers University concluded that “the tactics of FBI agents infiltrating militias, as well as paid informants being coerced into spying on these groups, and, in some instances, even providing the means and encouragement to carry out violent plots before being arrested, have been criticized as constituting entrapment by using agent provocateurs—agents posing as criminals to justify the financial and social expenses of counter-terrorism.”^[22]

In a previous study of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, I detailed how the FBI and CIA infiltrated right-wing militia groups and white supremacists on the Arkansas/Oklahoma border and got them involved in the worst terrorist act on American soil prior to 9/11.

One year later, the Clinton administration signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which provided a $500 million windfall for the FBI and curtailed habeas corpus rights by giving the Feds more access to private bank accounts and empowering the Secretary of State with the ability to establish a list of foreign terrorist organizations.

First proposed by CIA agent Theodore Shackley, the 1996 AEDPA allowed “no-knock” searches, expanded use of wiretaps, and made it easier for illegally seized evidence to be used in court and for the military to intervene in domestic situations deemed a national security threat.

Journalist David Hoffman wrote that the bill, a precursor to the USA Patriot Act, “gutted the First, Fourth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution, [laid] the framework for an entrenched police state, and [gave] the Federal government full power to target anybody deemed a threat to its authority.”^[23]

Section 328 amended the Foreign Assistance Act to bolster assistance in the form of arms and ammunition to certain countries, for the purpose of fighting terrorism. This led in 1997 to the creation of a secret “Eyes Only” liaison agreement between the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) and Saudi Arabia, followed by a subsequent CIA agreement in 1999 with Uzbekistan, whose president, Islam Karimov, had been accused of boiling political opponents alive.

Transforming America Ever More into a Police State

In the days following the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Republican politicians in at least three states (Florida, Mississippi and Indiana) introduced legislation creating new prohibitions on protest activity as part of what The Intercept called a “push to criminalize dissent.”^[24]

Congress also passed a $2.1 billion Capitol security bill upgrading funding for the Capitol Police, providing $300 million for security measures around the Capitol, and establishing a special quick reaction National Guard unit to respond to crises at the Capitol.^[25]

President-elect Joe Biden and members of Congress at the same time joined calls for new domestic terrorism legislation that would give even greater powers to law enforcement.

Biden further appropriated an extra $100 million in the President’s Fiscal Year 2022 budget for the Department of Justice (DOJ), FBI and DHS for combating “domestic terrorism.”

In 2021, the FBI secured a $500 million budget increase from the previous year and $1 billion increase by 2024. The DHS also saw significant budget increases after January 6, 2021, with a growing portion of the agency’s budget devoted to combating “domestic terrorism.”

The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2023, supported by most Democrats but blocked by Republicans in the Senate who feared the policing of political speech, called additionally for creation of domestic terrorism offices within the DHS, DOJ and FBI.

The Role of Bennie Thompson

Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol (commonly referred to as the January 6^th Committee), was a key figure in the merger of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) with the national security state after 9/11 using the pretext of “domestic terrorism,” and had been the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee from 2007 to 2011 and again since 2019.

A member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s who became the longest-serving African-American elected official in the state of Mississippi, Thompson’s first act as chair of the Homeland Security Committee was to sponsor a bill that granted sweeping new police powers to DHS, using the pretext of 9/11.

Later, Thompson supported DHS’s decision to label as potential terrorist threats anyone who opposed COVID measures, supported claims of election fraud, or believed that Donald Trump should be reinstated as President.

According to opensecrets.com, Thompson’s top donor in 2023/2024 at $10,000 was OSI Systems, Inc., a California-based company that develops and markets security inspection systems such as airport security, x-ray machines and metal detectors.

The company boasts on its website that its security division is “a leading supplier of screening solutions that help governments, corporations, law enforcement and military organizations around the world combat terrorism, drug and weapons smuggling, illegal immigration and trade fraud with speed and confidence.”^[26]

Rapiscan Systems, a sub-division of OSI Systems, Inc., has million-dollar contracts with law enforcement agencies, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and DHS, which financed its development of a radiation detection system in order to improve cargo inspection and purchased x-ray detection machines from it.

OSI clearly stands to benefit from heightened DHS, CBP and TSA budgets that are legitimized by elevating the threat of domestic terrorism—something that Bennie Thompson in his capacity as J6 Committee chairman did so well, validating OSI’s investment in him.

The Role of Liz Cheney

Liz Cheney (R-WY)’s role as co-chairwoman of the J6 Committee also deserves critical scrutiny. According to researcher Haley McLean, Cheney exerted a “remarkable level” of control over much of the J6 committee’s work, and she has been accused of withholding testimony from a Secret Service official that said that Trump had pushed for 10,000 National Guard troops to be deployed in D.C. on January 6th.

Cheney stands to benefit from Trump’s political downfall as a potential presidential contender.

A review of Cheney’s campaign contributors on opensecrets.com finds that she receives major funding from private equity firms owned by billionaires who stand to benefit from a “strategy of tension” and the polarization of the electorate bred by the manufactured J6 riot since it stops people from coming together along class lines against the ruling oligarchy.

Private equity CEOs generally favor heavy military and police spending and are heavy investors in military defense and police technology and homeland security industries.^[27]

In 2021-2022, Cheney received $14,500 from Blackstone Group, whose CEO, Stephen Schwarzman is considered the “Father of Artificial Intelligence (AI),” which has wide military and police-intelligence applications.

Another top Cheney donor, KKR, employed former CIA Director David Petraeus as a partner and was reported to be “making a big play in the military-defense sector,” having acquired a Texas-based firm specializing in aerospace hardware and major defense electronics firm in recent years and invested heavily in cyber-security and defense.

Revelations of FBI Whistleblowers

The revelations of three FBI whistleblowers—Stephen Friend, Garret O’Boyle and Marcus Allen, who testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in May 2023—raises suspicion that the FBI is covering up its role in J6 and trying to manipulate public opinion to advance its bureaucratic interests.

As CAM has previously reported, Friend and O’Boyle were fired for raising concerns to their superiors about the inflation of statistics regarding Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE) linked to January 6 and development of an incentive system that helped pad arrest numbers in this area.

Allen was fired for promoting “conspiratorial views” in regards to the events of J6 after he sent colleagues links to news articles that questioned the FBI’s handling of the J6 riot and pointed to federal government involvement in it through planting of provocateurs and informants in the Oath Keepers and other right-wing militias.

If the FBI had nothing to hide, it could have launched an investigation into the whistleblowers’ allegations and provided evidence to prove that what they were saying was off-base, if that was the case.

The Democratic Party’s lack of transparency surrounding J6 was apparent at the Select Subcommittee’s May 2023 hearing when Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), the former head of the Democratic National Committee, attacked Friend as a Russian agent and claimed that the three FBI agents were right-wing extremists and not real whistleblowers.^[28] (Friend has identified in the past as a Democrat and the others insisted they did not favor the actions of the rioters on J6).

Drawing from the playbook of Joe McCarthy, the resort to character smears was designed to discredit the whistleblowers without addressing the facts that they were presenting—which they had evidence to corroborate.

Confirming the Importance of the Arizona Group: Caroline Edwards’ Testimony

Though laser-like in its focus on Trump, the J6 Committee lent weight in a way to the “Fedsurrection” thesis by underscoring the importance of Ray Epps in triggering the riot, raising questions in turn about his delayed and then lenient sentencing.

On June 9, the J6 Committee called as a witness Caroline Edwards, a U.S. Capitol Police officer trampled by rioters, who testified about Epps’s significance.

When shown the video in which Epps whispered in the ear of a man (Ryan Samsel) who then pushed down the barricade, Edwards spoke about the significance to the riot of what she called the “Arizona group”—a reference to Epps and his associates who were wearing orange hats.

Edwards said that the Arizona group came out chanting “Fuck Antifa”—which is strange given that the purpose of the rally was to protest a stolen election and had nothing to do with Antifa.^[29]

Other Suspicious Things on January 6^th

In a previous article in CovertAction Magazine, I suggested that Congress should investigate several oddities on January 6^th that raised suspicion of a wider conspiracy. These oddities include:

1. The experience of Ryan Samsel, 42, a Pennsylvania barber with a long criminal record, who was captured on video Ray Epps confirmed to be authentic pushing over the barricade triggering the mob’s ascent into the Capitol building after Epps whispered something in his ear. In April 2021, following his arrest on criminal trespassing and other charges (he has since been convicted), Samsel was “viciously and savagely beaten” by a prison guard in a Washington, D.C., jail after the guard had zip-tied his hands. Samsel suffered a shattered orbital bone, and broken jaw and nose in the attack and lost sight in one of his eyes, according to one of his lawyers. A key question is whether Samsel was threatened by the authorities and told to keep quiet about his connection to Epps or some kind of larger conspiracy.^[30]

2. The strange death of Brian Sicknick, 42, a Capitol Police officer, about whom the medical examiner claimed died of natural causes though was reported to have suffered from two strokes after allegedly being sprayed with some kind of chemical irritant. (Initially it was falsely reported that he had been beaten by rioters with a fire extinguisher.) If Sicknick actually had no injuries, why would a 42-year-old man, previously in good health, suddenly die of natural causes?^[31] 

3. The strange deaths of Kevin Greeson, 55, and Benjamin Phillips, 50, who were said to have died in the crowd of hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.One theory promoted by a conservative blogger holds that Greeson and Phillips were struck by concussion grenades launched at the crowd by the Capitol Police. Video evidence confirms the launching of these grenades before the protest had even been declared an unlawful assembly, though does not show where the grenades landed or if they struck Greeson or Phillips.^[32]

4. The death of Rosanne Boyland from a drug overdose, which seems very strange under the circumstances—especially given that Boyland, 34, looked to be in good health in a photo taken just before the riot started. Her family said that she did not use drugs and had been sober for seven years. She took Adderall to treat attention deficit disorder but would have had to ingest 25 times her normal dose to die of it which is unlikely. Initial reports in mainstream media said that a woman had been shot by Capitol Police as rioters breached the Capitol, while an eyewitness claimed to have seen Boyland being beaten by a Metropolitan Police officer named Lila Morris with a stick, and said that this was captured on video.^[33] Another theory is that Boyland fell ill and died after the Capitol police sprayed chemical toxins in the crowd in addition to her being beaten.^[34]

A key question to ask is why the circumstances of Boyland’s death was not reported accurately in the mainstream media and by law enforcement agencies, and what the latter were trying to cover up?

If Boyland, Greeson and Phillips all died at the hands of the police or were stomped on by the crowd in the face of police violence, the dominant narrative of a violent mob plotting a coup on J6 begins to lose some of its credibility as does the legislation that came about after J6 to allegedly protect the public from these domestic terrorists.

The police now appear more as the bad guys who over-reacted—like against other protest movements—or worse, were deliberately trying to incite the crowd after having been given orders designed to make the carnage from the riot much worse than it naturally would have been for political reasons.

5. The lack of investigation into the death of Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed Air Force veteran, as she was trying to break through the window into the congressional chamber when the officer who shot her, Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd,^[35] violated police protocol by shooting Babbitt before issuing a warning. Some witnesses have suggested, backed by video evidence, that Babbitt was trying to de-escalate the situation before she went through the window and urge police to call for help to constrain agitators.^[36]

6. A man depicted on video cutting fences near the Capitol before Trump finished his speech, and well before the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers arrived at the scene, was never apprehended or arrested. The fence-cutter’s actions helped set the groundwork for the insurrection and widened the number of people who could be arrested for trespassing. Amazingly, the fence-cutter was seen interacting with a plain clothes police officer, Ryan Roe, who told him “appreciate it brother,” as he witnessed the fence-cutter illegally removing fence!^[37]

7. The immunity enjoyed by another key provocateur, known as “Scaffold Commander,” who instructed the crowd over a bullhorn to move forward toward the Capitol.

Fake Pipe Bombs

The greatest anomaly that the January 6 Committee never addressed and that gives indication of covert activity was the planting of fake pipe bombs^[38] at Republican and Democratic Party headquarters on January 5 by unknown assailants captured on video.

One of the bombs was placed next to a park bench next to DNC headquarters underneath low hanging branches of a tree. Even though it was visible when walking past it, the bomb sat conspicuously for more than 17 hours in a high traffic area without being identified.

The bomb went undetected for so long even though a security guard worked nearby and a Secret Service agent assigned to Vice President Kamala Harris—who lied about the fact that she was in the DNC building at this time—carried out a sweep.^[39]

After sitting undetected for 17 hours, the two bombs were coincidentally discovered within minutes of each other, virtually at the exact moment that tensions were escalating at the Capitol building.

The FBI withheld from the public footage of the pipe bomber placing the bomb, when this footage could have helped lead to his capture. They also took no forensic evidence from the bomb.^[40]

When a plain-clothes Capitol Police officer informed a member of the D.C. police and another from the Secret Service in a parked car about the bomb having been planted by the DNC bench, the police officer and Secret Service agent were nonchalant and lingered for several minutes before they did anything, as was captured on video.

The police officer and Secret Service agent even allowed a group of children to walk within feet of the bomb. A Capitol Police officer also walked up to the bomb and took a picture of it and then waved to the Secret Service agent and police officer before leaving.

A bomb-safe robot then allegedly came to dismantle the bomb.^[41]

All this gives the appearance of a staged event and cover-up that should have prompted a congressional investigation.

Something else that was suspicious was that the pipe bomb placed outside the RNC building was discovered by a woman who worked for a public-private partnership that provided first responders with emergency communications during terror attacks that had recently signed a $92 million contract with the FBI.

The woman repeatedly claimed the pipe bomb was found just 20 minutes before its allegedly timed detonation.

Problematically though, pictures of the timer released by the FBI show it had a maximum delay of one hour, raising the obvious question of how it could’ve possibly been laid on January 5 but rigged to go off the next day, as was claimed.

What Was the CIA Doing There?

CovertAction Magazine writer Kit Klarenberg reported on the legal activist group Judicial Watch unearthing 88 pages of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) records proving that CIA operatives were covertly present on January 6.

The documents secured via court order after the Department of Justice ignored Freedom of Information requests, include a series of text messages between Bureau agents in a group chat titled “January 7 intel chain.” One message states “two CIA bomb techs” were assisting with a “pipe bomb scene” in D.C.” The other mentions “several CIA dog teams on standby” in the vicinity of the “insurrection.”

What the teams were doing there, remains unclear, but the CIA’s track record and suspect nature of the pipe bombs is clear.

How Will Future Historians Depict January 6, 2021?

How will future historians view January 6 and write about it in textbooks?

It will probably be viewed as a symptom of growing polarization and anger among the American electorate in an era of over-the-top political corruption, right-wing demagoguery and imperial decline.

As far as who specifically was responsible, orthodox historians will depict the standard narrative while ignoring all the evidence of covert activity.

Inquisitive-minded historians (often branded as revisionists) will, however, recognize that the evidence pointing to covert activity and a cover-up is strong and that the “Fedsurrection” narrative has plausibility, even if Trump incited his followers.

Coming back to the answer posed in the title of this article, both the left and right appear to be both right and wrong when it comes to January 6.

Liberals are right that Trump is a threat to the republic who misled his followers into believing that the 2020 election was stolen before any investigation could be conducted and created a toxic political environment that resulted in January 6.^[42]

However, liberals are also wrong in ignoring evidence of covert activity by the FBI, whose aim appears to have been to advance a “strategy of tension,” using provocateurs to inflame the crowd and help trigger the riot while making the riot seem worse than it was.

The covert activity would have further been designed to undermine Trump who had been previously targeted under the manufactured Russia-Gate scandal and was soon thereafter subjected to his second impeachment hearing.^[43]

Dominant factions in the ruling elite loathe Trump because of his erratic temperament, inability to rule by consensus, periodic candor (like when he said the U.S. went into Syria to “steal its oil”) and repudiation of certain traditional U.S. foreign policy approaches (i.e., unequivocal support for NATO, free trade agreements, and open hostility toward targets of U.S. regime change, like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, with whom Trump engaged in periodic diplomacy).

For many similar reasons, factions of the ruling establishment hated Richard Nixon and brought him down through the CIA-manufactured Watergate scandal.^[44]

A key part of the covert activity on January 6 looks to be the planting of the pipe bombs whose purpose appears to be similar to the anthrax attacks post-9/11—that is, to enhance the public’s fear of terrorism (by right-wing anti-government extremists, with the decline of fear of Middle-Eastern terrorism), resulting in support for police state measures.

Additionally, J6 had the effect of putting a halt to any public discussion of election transparency, which, despite Trump’s shrill cries, is a legitimate concern for all elections,^[45] and helped further polarize the U.S. electorate, who would not be at risk of coming together along class lines to challenge the ruling oligarchy.

Those who believe that my assessment is conspiratorial should study the pattern of covert deception operations in American history—from the sinking of the USS Maine and Lusitania to the JFK assassination, Operation Northwoods, Gulf of Tonkin, and Watergate deception operation designed to bring down Richard Nixon, to the FBI and CIA’s infiltration of both left and right wing groups in an attempt to alter the political landscape.

Powerful interests in the U.S. have for a long time manufactured fake catastrophes and crises in order to manipulate public opinion, and carried out psychological warfare operations, in which the CIA is expert. A lot of evidence indicates that the January 6 riot fits with the wider historical pattern and should be further investigated and properly understood in that context.

---

1. See The January 6th Report: The Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, with foreword by David Remnick, and afterword by Jamie Raskin (New York: Caledon Books, 2022). ↑
2. Even left-wing authors like Chris Hedges have condemned what Hedges called the “judicial lynching” of January 6 protestors, who were forced to endure years in pretrial detention and prison for misdemeanor crimes. Many were placed in solitary confinement under draconian conditions and denied access to their families, prompting some to become suicidal. See Chris Hedges, “Lynching the January 6 Deplorables,” Consortium News, March 6, 2023. Lawyer Joseph McBride told Hedges that “when you look at the civil disorder charge, they are saying that if January 6 was one big civil disorder, and if you had any type of interaction with a police officer that day that may or may not have caused the police officer to step away from his duties for a moment, you can go down with civil disorder and get five years in jail.” Hedges wrote poignantly: “The cheerleading, or at best indifference, by Democratic Party supporters and much of the left to these show trials will come back to haunt them. We are exacerbating the growing tribalism and political antagonisms that will increasingly express themselves through violence.” ↑
3. See Julie Kelly, January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right, with foreword by Lee Smith (New York: Bombardier Books, 2022). According to Kelly, many in the crowd favored election reforms and greater transparency in elections and were not necessarily far-right. ↑
4. Beattie, who defines himself as a political centrist, wrote that Revolver News had done the “investigative work that America’s hundreds of other news outlets are too corrupt or too cowardly to perform themselves. We have watched the tape, read the indictments, dissected the news reports, and punctured the narratives.” See also Kelly, January 6. ↑
5. In the morning on January 6, Epps was caught on video instructing people going to watch Trump’s speech to go to the Capitol afterwards, pointing them in the right direction. ↑
6. Epps’ phone records which could reveal his contacts on J6 were never subpoenaed tellingly by the January 6 House Select Committee when over 100 subpoenas were issued for other J6 defendants. This indicates to Darren Beattie that the House Select Committee was politicized and part of a coverup. ↑
7. As one characteristic piece on the intelligence failings, see Mary Clare Jalonick, “FBI and DHS Ignored ‘Massive Amount’ of Intelligence Before Jan. 6, Senate Says,” HuffPost, June 27, 2023, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/capitol-riot-intelligence-fbi-dhs-senate_n_649b33b8e4b01c46134c17e6 ↑
8. Secret operatives and informants authorized to commit crimes were paid $548 million in 2020 alone, according to Beattie. Chris Hedges reported that the F.B.I. had as many as eight informants in the Proud Boys that included its leader, Enrique Tarrio, during the storming of the Capitol, raising the very real possibility of entrapment. Beattie identified a man wearing a black ski mask from Texas who was never arrested working in collaboration with Epps. The man in the black ski mask was seen destroying police barricades. “Black ski mask” had been on a “hippies for Trump” bus which was stopped by the Capitol Police the day before the riot while parked outside the U.S. Justice Department because the bus had illegal weapons and bombs stored on it. The bus driver was arrested on firearms charges. Black ski mask man was shaken down by police and asked for DNA samples but let go. Beattite finds it suspicious that in an overwhelmingly Democratic Party city, there was no media publicity surrounding the incident. He believes that it was part of an effort to make it seem like the riot erupted unexpectedly on January 6. The suspicion that black ski mask was a provocateur is also fueled by the question as to why somebody would travel across the country from Texas and not even attend Trump’s speech; black ski masks’ breach of the police barricades occurred well before Trump had finished speaking. The behavior of other key figures who helped breach the police barricades and led people into the Capitol gave indication to Beattie that they were federal agents, a suspicion further aroused by the fact that they were never indicted. ↑
9. This was in part because the FBI is bound by Department of Justice guidelines that proportion its informant roster to its threat assessment, with FBI Director Christopher Wray naming right-wing domestic terrorism a #1 law enforcement priority beginning in April 2020. ↑
10. In the Whitmer case, at least 12 undercover informants were outed in the months subsequent to the initial arrests after accidental disclosures from the FBI. ↑
11. Lee Smith wrote in Tablet Magazine that “Counterterrorism is a multibillion dollar Beltway industry, filling a trough that feeds Republican and Democratic constituencies including the State Department, spy services, and Washington-area NGOs and think-tanks. As America downsizes its presence in the Middle East, national security bureaucrats and their parasitical private sector partners fear shrinking budgets. Hence the big move from countering violent extremism in Muslim communities to confronting ‘domestic terrorists.” Quoted in Kelly, January 6, 117. ↑
12. Morgan further stated that the outcome of the election would not be transformed even if “ fraud, maladministration, abuse of irregularities, if aggregate and read most favorably to the campaign,” were considered. Morgan said he thought that “everyone’s assessment in the room…was that it was not sufficient [allegations of voter fraud and other irregularities] to be outcome determinative.” The January 6th Report, 15. During the fall election campaign, it is also worth remembering that Trump declared that he would not accept the result of the vote if it went against him. ↑
13. Defenders of Trump note that the speech was given after the barricade had already been breached, and that Trump said “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” They also note that Trump called for more National Guard protection, but that his calls were ignored. ↑
14. Former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson testified on June 28 that then-deputy White House chief of staff Tony Ornato told her that Trump got so angry when he was told he could not go to the Capitol on January 6 after his speech that morning that he reached up toward the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel with one hand and lunged at Robert Engel, his Secret Service agent on that day, with the other. This account has been disputed by Trump and by a secret service agent driving the car who told House investigators (in a transcript released well after the January 6 committee hearings were made public) that Trump never tried to grab the steering wheel, lunged at him or physically accosted agents. The driver’s testimony raises suspicion that the story about Trump lunging at the driver was black propaganda fabricated by Trump’s enemies or the intelligence agencies in order to make it look like Trump was crazy and more intent on leading his followers into an invasion of the Capitol and overthrow of the government.
15. A lot of the members of these militias are disgruntled military veterans. ↑
16. Some Nazi insignia were on display at the January 6th riot. The Q-anon philosophy is also dangerous in its promotion of the view of Trump as a liberating force from Washington’s corruption. ↑
17. Kevin James Shay, Operation Chaos: The Capitol Attack and the Campaign to Erode Democracy (New York: Random House, 2023). According to Shay, Trump’s plot involved the manufacture of fake documents signed by GOP officials in swing states. A goal was to have martial law declared. Ineptly carried out, the plot failed because Vice President Mike Pence, up to that point a Trump loyalist, didn’t bow down to Trump. Subsequently Pence became a target of the January 6 lynch mob. ↑
18. Lazaro Gambio and Karen Yourish, “Trump’s Pattern of Pressure to Overturn 2020 Election,” The New York Times, February 22, 2024, A9. Prosecutors have alleged that Trump tried to persuade Justice Department officials to “open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.” The J6 Committee focused on the central role played by Bannon behind the scenes in formulating plans for J6 as part of a strategy to delegitimize the incoming Biden administration and sabotage his ability to govern. According to professor Gabriel Rockhill, the Publix supermarket heir Julie Jenkins Fancelli provided around $300,000 for the Stop the Steal rally. 
19. Kelly, January 6, 205, 206. In the early 1990s, the FBI launched Patriot Conspiracy (PATCON), a fake movement of Christian extremists in order to collect information on other Christian extremists. During the 1950s and 1960s, the FBI infiltrated the Klu Klux Klan (KKK), as is discussed in David Cunningham’s book, There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Kan, and FBI Counterintelligence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). ↑
20. On the history of COINTELPRO, see Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and The American Indian Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1990). Shay details how more recently, the FBI and right wing militia group members infiltrated the Black Lives Matter movement and staged violent incidents designed to discredit it. Shay, Operation Chaos, ch. 1. ↑
21. Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (London: Routledge, 2005) details how the U.S. helped to advance a “strategy of tension” in Europe conducive to its interests in the Cold War by financing right-wing terrorist networks that plotted false-flag operations that were designed to sow chaos and undermine the political left. ↑
22. Kelly, January 6, 205, 206. ↑
23. See David Hoffman, The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror (London: Feral House, 1998). ↑
24. Reporters Alleen Brown and Akela Lacy called the laws “a new brand of anti-protest laws on steroids, creating penalties for a wide array of activities, from damaging monuments to obstructing traffic. The bills include measures that could encourage harsh law enforcement responses to protests as well as provisions meant to prevent local governments from reducing police funding.” The Mississippi bill would allow the state to strip unemployment benefits from anyone who pleads guilty to participating in disruptive protests. See Alleen Brown and Akela Lacy, “In Wake of Capitol Riot, GOP Legislatures ‘Rebrand’ Old Anti-BLM Protest Laws, The Intercept, January 12, 2021. ↑
25. Kelly, January 6, 161. Washington D.C. was on military lockdown after the riots until May with 26,000 federal troops surrounding the Capitol.
26. It goes on to state that its products and services from Rapiscan^® Systems and American Science and Engineering (AS&E^®) brands utilize multiple inspection technologies and advanced threat identification algorithms for baggage and parcel inspection, cargo and vehicle inspection, hold baggage and people screening, radiation detection, and explosive and narcotics trace detection. ↑
27. Responsible Statecraft reported that in 2021, private equity funds invested $15 billion in nearly 140 defense-related deals. ↑
28. Under oath, the three whistleblowers said that they did not support the tactics of the J6 rioters. ↑
29. Suspicion is aroused that the “Arizona group” was composed of federal agents who wanted to trigger animosity between pro-Trumpers and Antifa as part of the “strategy of tension.” Antifa has itself been accused of being infiltrated by agent provocateurs. There is video footage publicly available showing groups of people changing their black block wardrobe characteristic of Antifa activists to include pro-Trump paraphernalia prior to marching on the Capitol. ↑
30. Kelly suggests Samsel was beaten by guards after a fight over toilet paper. Kelly, January 6, 245. She uses his case as an example of the brutalization of January 6 suspects and inmates by prison officials. ↑
31. The New York Times initially reported that Sicknick had been beaten to death with a fire extinguisher, before retracting the claim more than a month later. To this day, media accounts claim Sicknick was “slain” on January 6, and powerful Democrats, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi, have continued to cite his death as evidence of a “deadly insurrection” at the Capitol, though it is clear he died later on under mysterious circumstances. Footage actually showed him walking with his health intact at the Capitol during the riot. Riot witness and blogger Tayler Hansen suggests that Sicknick had a stroke but was deprived medical care by other members of the Capitol Police who did not help him, callously ignoring the signs of his deteriorating condition. ↑
32. One observer suggested the medical response was delayed. ↑
33. Kelly, January 6, xiii. Two Capitol police officers, Howard Liebengood, 51, and Jeffrey Smith, 35, committed suicide within a week of the riot. It is unclear if this had anything to do with the riots, seems suspicious, and should be further investigated. ↑
34. Kelly, January 6, 170. Kelly also suggests the possibility that Boyland had gone into a tunnel to try and escape the crowd or speak on her phone and was then pushed by police back into the mob and trampled to death. ↑
35. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who sat on the January 6 Committee, donated to Byrd’s legal defense fund, which is a blatant conflict of interest. ↑
36. Kelly, January 6, ch. 7. The bodies of the five people who died on January 6^th were cremated, preventing proper investigations into their causes of death. A video shows officers allowing one of the agitators, Zachary Alam, to break the glass of the congressional chamber, and that Ashli Babbitt was trying to help law enforcement by trying to prevent Alam from going through the window before she was shot. (Babbitt punched Alam in the face). ↑
37. It is significant that the Capitol fence was breached at around 12:21 PM, 49 minutes before Trump concluded his speech on the Ellipse which is a roughly 32 minute walk from the Capitol. So anyone listening to Trump’s speech would have only gotten to the Capitol well over an hour after the crowd had entered the Capitol building. ↑
38. The FBI said the bombs were “viable.” But they were connected to a 60-minute kitchen timer, making it impossible to trigger an explosion the next day, Steven D’Antuono, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, testified. Incidentally, D’Antuono, who headed the investigation into the pipe bomb, oversaw, as head of the Detroit FBI Field Office, the entrapment operation known as the Whitmer kidnapping plot. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who has degrees in both electrical and mechanical engineering from MIT, said that a kitchen timer “doesn’t create an electrical impulse, you would need a battery to ignite.” ↑
39. Three surveillance cameras customarily pointed at the DNC office building were strangely turned away from the scene just after the bomb was found, obscuring how the bomb was disposed of. . ↑
40. In 2018, so-called “MAGA bomber” Cesar Sayoc, who allegedly built and mailed pipe bombs to prominent Democrats, was instantly identified from just a single trace fingerprint. A serious investigation should have led to a similarly quick capture of the J6 pipe bomber. ↑
41. Reviewing the evidence, Thomas Massie (R-KY) said: “This is an ongoing coverup at this point. If there were indeed two operable pipe bombs, that would be the biggest threat that existed on January 6…It doesn’t make any sense why they wouldn’t be promoting that threat to advance that narrative unless they had something to do with the pipe bombs and they’re trying to memory-hole the whole thing to avoid embarrassment.” The January 6 Committee did not mention the pipe bombs at all in the body of its nearly 900-page final report on the day, except for a brief mention in an appendix. The Capitol police explained their nonchalant response as being the result of their desire to not arouse public panic, which makes no sense. ↑
42. For evidence of voting irregularities in the state of Michigan as well as Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin among others, see Patrick Colbeck, The 2020 Coup: What Happened, What Can Can We Do? (McHenry Press, 2020). The book’s partisan perspective leads the author to ignore evidence that the GOP had for years worked to try and rig American elections in its favor. See eg. Shay, Operation Chaos. Kelly in January 6 considers legitimate protesters belief that the Democrats had rigged the election by using the COVID pandemic to push for mail-in voting which was unreliable and that Democratic Party operatives had unconstitutionally altered the voting procedure in various states and stopped counting votes in key battleground states, solidifying Biden’s victory. ↑
43. Subsequently Trump was subjected to a lawfare campaign that was further designed to discredit him in the eyes of the electorate and diminish his chances of reelection in 2024. Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Ruling Class Faction Mounts Coup Against Nixon and Trump: Should Progressives Support Such Efforts?” CovertAction Magazine, April 26, 2023. ↑
44. For a comparison between the campaigns against Trump and Nixon, see Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Ruling Class Faction Mounts Coup Against Nixon and Trump: Should Progressives Support Such Efforts?” CovertAction Magazine, April 26, 2023. When asked about Putin being a killer, Trump replied that “we have our killers here too.” This couldn’t have pleased the CIA. ↑
45. Colbeck, The 2020 Coup, 240. When a crime occurs, one always has to ask the question who benefited. In this case, if Trump was the perpetrator he did not benefit and the crime backfired on him. The beneficiaries of January 6 were the anti-Trump forces, the Democrats and U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. ↑

---

CovertAction Magazine is made possible by subscriptions, orders and donations from readers like you.

Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism

Click the whistle and donate

When you donate to CovertAction Magazine, you are supporting investigative journalism. Your contributions go directly to supporting the development, production, editing, and dissemination of the Magazine.

CovertAction Magazine does not receive corporate or government sponsorship. Yet, we hold a steadfast commitment to providing compensation for writers, editorial and technical support. Your support helps facilitate this compensation as well as increase the caliber of this work.

Please make a donation by clicking on the donate logo above and enter the amount and your credit or debit card information.

CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your gift is tax-deductible for federal income purposes. CAI’s tax-exempt ID number is 87-2461683.

We sincerely thank you for your support.

---

Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s). CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI), including its Board of Directors (BD), Editorial Board (EB), Advisory Board (AB), staff, volunteers and its projects (including CovertAction Magazine) are not responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. This article also does not necessarily represent the views the BD, the EB, the AB, staff, volunteers, or any members of its projects.

Differing viewpoints: CAM publishes articles with differing viewpoints in an effort to nurture vibrant debate and thoughtful critical analysis. Feel free to comment on the articles in the comment section and/or send your letters to the Editors, which we will publish in the Letters column.

Copyrighted Material: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York, we are making such material available in an effort to advance the understanding of humanity’s problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. You can read more about ‘fair use’ and US Copyright Law at the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Republishing: CovertAction Magazine (CAM) grants permission to cross-post CAM articles on not-for-profit community internet sites as long as the source is acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original CovertAction Magazine article. Also, kindly let us know at info@CovertActionMagazine.com. For publication of CAM articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: info@CovertActionMagazine.com.

By using this site, you agree to these terms above.

---

About the Author