Oath Keeper Guilty Plea Chips Away at Tucker Carlson’s Theory That FBI Organized Jan. 6

Tucker Carlson claimed on his show last month that the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was organized by the FBI.

In a June monologue, Carlson mistakenly assumed that a series of un-indicted and unnamed people referenced in various Capitol siege cases were FBI operatives.

“In potentially every single case, they were FBI operatives,” Carlson declared. “Really? In the Capitol on Jan. 6th!”

“They were almost certainly working for the FBI,” Carlson added, before bizarrely concluding that the FBI operatives were “organizers” of the attack.

“So, FBI operatives were organizing the attack on the capitol on January 6th, according to government documents,” he said. “So, it turns out this white supremacist insurrection was — again, by the government’s own admission in these documents — organized at least in part by government agents!”

The claim that the FBI organized the Capitol attack was based on a misunderstanding of how unnamed persons are characterized in court documents. The people that Carlson assumed were FBI agents are referred to as “Person 1”, “Person 2,” and so on. But Carlson’s claim, and the supporting evidence, was dismissed thoroughly and at length by people who know what they are talking about.

True to their predictions, there’s new information that chips away at the Fox News host’s theory.

Mark Grods, a 54-year-old from Alabama and member of the Oath Keepers, pleaded guilty in federal court on Wednesday to charges related to the Capitol attack.

The far-right militia member accepted guilt on one charge of criminal conspiracy and on another for obstruction of an official proceeding. He agreed to cooperate with the ongoing investigation.

Grods, who is not an FBI operative, just so happens to have been “Person 15.”

Mark Grods, the latest Oath Keeper to plead guilty and cooperate with the DoJ, was until today identified as “Person 15” in court filings.

That leaves at least 8 other unnamed persons mentioned in the latest indictment. The question is: how many others have already flipped?

— Ken Bensinger (@kenbensinger) June 30, 2021

Grods joins another “Person” whose identity has been made public. The Washington Post previously reported that “Person One” is Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.

That makes at least two people who, despite being labeled as “Persons” in court filings, are not FBI operatives, agents, or employees by any known account — as Carlson claimed they were.

Carlson did correctly note that law enforcement agents infiltrated an alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI).  Maybe they even infiltrated some of the Jan. 6th groups prior to the attack.  Maybe.  But if they did, they would likely not be listed as “Persons” in federal court documents.  Rather, they would be most likely listed as “Undercover Employees” (“UCE”) or “Confidential Human Sources” (“CHS”). The documents in the cases involving Whitmer make it very clear that undercover agents were involved.

Despite Carlson’s attempts to provide an alternate theory for what happened on Jan. 6th, the obvious answer is right in front of him: a mob of Trump supporters, egged on by the president’s call for a “wild” day of protest, marched from his rally, beat back the police, and stormed through the U.S. Capitol.

Law&Crime’s Aaron Keller contributed to this report.