FBI Reportedly Warned of Plans for Violence Before Trump Mob Stormed the Capitol

A new report indicates that the FBI knew political “extremists” were heading to Washington last week before President Donald Trump’s supporters ended up storming the U.S. Capitol.

Washington Post reports that they obtained an internal document from an FBI office in Virginia, and it warned that people intending violence and “war” were planning to converge in the capital. According to the paper, the document begins by cautioning of a violent reaction to “unlawful lockdowns,” but then it goes into an online thread that instructed people “Be ready to fight.”

“Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa [sic] slave soldiers being spilled,” the document says, quoting the threat. “Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”

The Post reports that the FBI wrote up a report shortly after learning about the thread, and it was shared with their Washington field office the day before the storming of Congress. Their sources also say the FBI was still analyzing the raw intelligence in the report, “and that agencies who receive it ‘are requested not to take action based on this raw reporting without prior coordination with the FBI.'”

In the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, there have been numerous questions about why law enforcement wasn’t better prepared before Trump’s supporters laid siege to the building. These include questions about whether the FBI was warned about the possibility that things could turn violent.

Steven Sund, outgoing chief of the Capitol Police, was compelled to resign last week over scrutiny for the security failure. Reports at the time said that Sund was expecting the Trump rally to be a “free speech demonstration” rather than a “violent attack.” On a similar note, Steven D’Antuono, head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, previously insisted “there was no indication” that Trump’s rally would have anything “other than First Amendment-protected activity.”