FBI Informants More Likely Than Agents at Jan 6, Former Undercover Agent Says

Recent inquiries about whether FBI operatives were mixed in among the protesters and intruders who broke into the United States Capitol on Jan. 6 will more likely uncover the presence of FBI informants rather than undercover agents, according to Marc Ruskin, a 27-year FBI veteran and former undercover agent who is also an Epoch Times contributor.

Before he left the bureau in 2012, there were only about 100 undercover FBI agents in the whole country, Ruskin told the Epoch Times. Deployment of each requires a lengthy, “very resource-intensive” operation that needs to be approved on several levels. Even if there was a top-down operation run by the headquarters underway on Jan. 6, it would have been unlikely that any significant number of undercover agents were present, he said.

Informants, on the other hand, would have been much more convenient, needing only some vetting and an assigned handling agent. The bureau uses them regularly and they’re not necessarily aware of each other even if they collect information on the same target, Ruskin said.

He said that during his tenure he hadn’t seen the FBI use informants as de facto “agents provocateur” to incite crimes at a political event, but that he has watched the bureau getting politicized by its leadership and, particularly in recent years, repeatedly breaking its own rules.

Recent reports by Revolver News and other right-leaning outlets have presented a list of clues that raise questions about the FBI’s involvement in the events of Jan. 6, when intruders at the Capitol caused a several-hour delay in the certification of the 2020 presidential election by Congress.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has since run a “shock and awe” operation against the intruders, slapping them with charges that threaten decades in prison. Many have been held behind bars without bail, even placed in solitary confinement. Yet the indictments show that a number of people that seem to have engaged in similar actions on Jan. 6 have somehow escaped prosecution. It’s not clear why, since it doesn’t appear to be a consequence of lacking evidence or plea negotiations, based on the Revolver investigation.

Furthermore, the three organizations that the DOJ alleges played leading roles in planning illegal activity on Jan. 6 are known to have had FBI informants in their ranks. Several members of the Three Percenter militia group, which interprets the Constitution as a license to defy most current federal authorities, were arrested last year for allegedly planning to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. It turned out FBI informants and undercover agents played key roles in the alleged plot. One of the alleged culprits was also a member of Oath Keepers, a militia group that believes military and law enforcement should defy federal government where it has overstepped its constitutional mandate. Finally, pro-Western men’s club Proud Boys, whose members are known to engage in street fights with adherents of the anarcho-communist Antifa network, has in the past few years been led by Enrique Tarrio, who was recently revealed as a past FBI informant.