While most have been focused on the election, the NY Times published an important article about Jan. 6 that many did not notice.
At the time, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) confronted an FBI official on FBI or confidential human sources of information (informants) who could have been involved or had information about the events of Jan. 6. The Columbia Bugle tweeted:
Senator @tedcruz's Full Questioning Of The FBI At Senate Judiciary Hearing Today About Whether There Were FBI Informants Present On January 6th And Ray Epps “How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of January 6th?” “Who is Ray Epps?”
It appears that one the most prominent people in the Oathkeepers, their vice president, had been an FBI informant, as per the NY Times.
An F.B.I. informant who was embedded for months in the inner circle of Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, is likely to testify as a defense witness at the seditious conspiracy trial of Mr. Rhodes in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The informant, Greg McWhirter, served as the Oath Keepers’ vice president but was secretly reporting to the F.B.I. about the group’s activities in the weeks and months leading up to the Capitol attack, according to two people familiar with the matter.
But that's not all.
Mr. McWhirter is the second known F.B.I. confidential source who was in a position to provide information to federal agents about the Oath Keepers before Jan. 6, raising questions about why investigators did not know more about the attack on the Capitol.
Near the start of Mr. Rhodes’s trial, Abdullah Rasheed, a former Oath Keeper from West Virginia, told the jury that he became alarmed by the violent language Mr. Rhodes used during a video conference with members of his group in November 2020 and provided the F.B.I. with a recording of the call.
“The more I listened to the call,” Mr. Rasheed testified, “it sounded like we were going to war against the United States government.”
Officials at the F.B.I. did not respond to Mr. Rasheed’s initial attempts to contact them and only reached out to him after Jan. 6.
The F.B.I. also had a confidential source in the Kansas City chapter of the Proud Boys in the months leading up to Jan. 6. That person, a low-level member of the far-right group, marched with other Proud Boys into the Capitol on Jan. 6. But in meetings with the government before the Capitol was stormed, he told investigators that the organization had not planned to attack the building and stop the certification of the 2020 election.
It was also known that leader of the Proud Boys had also been an informant of the government in the past. He happened to be arrested just before January 6th, which means he wasn't present at the scene of the incident.
The NY Times even snuck in the obvious question: If the FBI was in contact with all of these people, and are insisting that it was a prior plot, why was it not prevented earlier, if it was the result of a “seditious conspiracy” and not a spontaneous riot?
If the FBI received information from Rasheed, why did they not follow up on it? It's likely that if you had information that specific, you'd pursue it, particularly if he was saying there were suspicions of violence. Then why did they not?
If McWhirter was an informant, then why did the government not put McWhirter on the witness stand? Why did they not want jurors to be told that they had an informant involved in the investigation? What's it about the defense team that would like to speak to him?
There are many questions going around here. With all the issues that could be to be dealt with by the newly elected GOP majority, perhaps Ted Cruz wants to continue the questioning to uncover the truth behind this.
