For the second time this 12 months, FBI Director Kash Patel has stepped ahead to correct claims a few MAGA conspiracy concept he once performed a key function in selling.
For the second time this 12 months, he might be preventing a shedding battle.
Months in the past, it was Patel’s sudden transfer to downplay the Jeffrey Epstein information. As a right-wing commentator, he had performed up an enormous supposed conspiracy that urged the federal government was hiding others who had been concerned in Epstein’s crimes, saying at one level, “Put on your big boy pants, and let us know who the pedophiles are.”
But in May, as FBI director, he immediately mentioned the proof confirmed there was nothing explosive within the information, angering the MAGA movement.
We bought one thing of a repeat this weekend after conservative media and President Donald Trump seized on leaked data that mentioned 274 FBI brokers had been dispatched amid the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol.
They promptly butchered the knowledge, although. They urged it was proof that the brokers had been “embedded” within the crowd beforehand – and even that the brokers had been the varieties of presidency provocateurs inciting rioters that MAGA has lengthy baselessly theorized about.
Trump shortly solid it in probably the most scandalous phrases.
“It was just revealed that the FBI had secretly placed … 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during, the January 6th Hoax,” Trump said on Truth Social on Saturday. He added that the brokers had been “probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists, but certainly not as ‘Law Enforcement Officials.’”
But the knowledge mentioned nothing of the type. A doc obtained by the right-wing website Just The News as an alternative mentioned the 274 brokers included those that had “responded” to the riot on the Capitol and to close by threats like pipe bombs. (NCS has not confirmed the veracity of the doc and has previously reported that no undercover FBI brokers had been on the Capitol on January 6, in accordance to a DOJ watchdog, however that 26 paid FBI informants had been in Washington, DC, that day.)
And remarkably, Patel himself stepped ahead to supply a corrective to the president. He emphasised that the brokers had been known as in afterward.
“Agents were sent into a crowd control mission after the riot was declared by Metro Police …” Patel told Fox News Digital on Saturday.
He later promoted the story on X, again emphasizing these brokers had been responding to the assault – not being there “prior to” it.
He mentioned that “274 FBI agents were thrown into crowd control on Jan 6.”
It was a fairly outstanding second. Here was a president increase this doc as proof of his long-running claims a few huge authorities false flag. He was joined by lots of the most conspiratorial voices within the MAGA motion.
But virtually instantly, his personal appointed FBI director – a loyalist if there ever was one – stepped ahead and fully undermined it.
Patel made some extent to argue that there was nonetheless one thing amiss with the FBI sending brokers to reply to the assault. (He repeatedly mentioned that went towards FBI “standards.”) But the true level is that he was saying, contra Trump and others, that these brokers weren’t “secretly placed” within the crowds beforehand to act as agitators.
And it’s all of the extra outstanding given Patel’s own history with this particular conspiracy theory.
In his 2023 e book, “Government Gangsters,” Patel claimed there have been “strange agitators” on the Capitol on January 6. He mentioned they’d “stirred up the crowd to breach the Capitol beforehand.” He cited “instigators being ignored by the FBI.”
“All the signs of a cover-up are on full display …” Patel mentioned.
He went even additional on his podcast in November 2022, claiming the FBI had been “planning Jan. 6 for a year.” In September of that 12 months, he urged the FBI had entrapped rioters and that the FBI focused January 6 “because they wanted a political target, a political prosecution, not one based on law and fact.”
Patel typically targeted on the speculation that the FBI planted confidential human sources within the crowd somewhat than FBI brokers. But at one level, he took concern with an FBI official who didn’t immediately reply when requested if federal brokers had been concerned with January 6.
“If the answer was no, she would have said so,” Patel mentioned.
(In truth, the witness mentioned she resisted answering so as not to reveal FBI “sources and methods.”)
As with the Epstein information, it’s extraordinarily telling {that a} man so steeped in these conspiracy theories would see match to correct them when he’s really bought the proof at his fingertips. These theories are sometimes constructed on innuendo, hypothesis and misinformation. And here’s a living proof.
But as with the Epstein information, it’s clear even Patel can solely achieve this a lot.
Despite the FBI director’s corrective on Saturday night time, some MAGA voices have gone proper alongside claiming the brand new proof is a bombshell.
Appearing on NCS on Sunday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson nonetheless spoke as if FBI may have been concerned in spurring the assault.
“Apparently, there were 274 FBI agents in the crowd on January 6,” the Louisiana Republican mentioned.
Even as NCS’s Jake Tapper famous that Patel had mentioned the brokers got here after the riot began and mentioned it wasn’t proof of a “false flag,” Johnson was undeterred.
“How do you know that? There’s a lot of questions,” Johnson mentioned, including: “Did they spur on the crowd? Did they open the gates to allow them in? I don’t know. These are questions, but they should be answered.”
Prominent conservative chief Matt Schlapp went on Newsmax and cited “300 undercover FBI agents in the January 6 crowd.”
GOP Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri claimed Monday on X that the brand new proof confirmed the “FBI had over 270 plainclothes agents embedded in the J6 crowd.”
And even Trump in an interview with NBC News on Sunday urged there was nonetheless one thing amiss with the 274 brokers.
“Don’t forget, we just found out about all of these FBI agents being there,” the president mentioned.
He didn’t repeat his declare that the brokers had been there beforehand or that they may have instigated the riot. But Trump – who confronted a second impeachment over his personal function in January 6 — is clearly not accomplished casting this as one way or the other suspicious.
If nothing else, Patel’s transfer to correct this misinformation will present a counterpoint to anyone – together with Trump – who brings this up sooner or later.
But the entire thing additionally reveals how the conspiracy theories he once trafficked might be laborious to kill.