CV NEWS FEED // A former high-ranking official at the FBI’s Washington Field Office told Congress that the bureau lost track of how many of their paid informants were present at the January 6 Capitol riot.
The Washington office’s former assistant director in charge, Steven D’Antuono, also stated that there was enough confusion that the FBI had to conduct an audit or a “poll” to tally how many of their own had been among the rioters.
The Daily Wire reported that D’Antuono
told the House Judiciary Committee during a closed-door testimony in June that his office learned there had been confidential human sources (CHS) from various field offices, as well as other informants who went to the nation’s Capitol on their own accord.
Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-OH, wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday after speaking with D’Antuono. “The Committee on the Judiciary is continuing to examine the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) management of its Confidential Human Source (CHS) program and how the FBI handles informants,” Jordan wrote:
We recently learned from a former senior FBI official that there was internal ambiguity about how many FBI CHSs were present at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, so much so that the FBI had to put out a “poll” to determine the exact number of FBI sources present that day.
We also learned that at least one FBI CHS was in communication with his handler that day as events unfolded. This new information reinforces our existing concerns about the FBI’s selection, vetting, and use of CHSs.
Jordan said “the new information is extremely concerning” and suggests
that the FBI cannot adequately track the activities and operations of its informants, and that it lost control of its CHSs present at the Capitol on January 6. These revelations reinforce existing concerns, identified by Special Counsel Durham, about the FBI’s use of, and payment to, CHSs who have fabricated evidence and misrepresented information.
The Justice Department Inspector General also identified critical problems in the FBI’s CHS program, including the FBI’s failure to fully vet CHSs and the FBI’s willingness to ignore red flags that would call into question an informant’s reliability.
“Asked how many informants the audit discovered were in the crowd that day, D’Antuono would only say ‘a handful,’” reported The New York Post’s Miranda Devine.
Devine added:
The FBI spends an average of $42 million each year in payments to its Confidential Human Sources, according to the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General, which has raised concerns about the vetting process for these paid informants.
