Newsmax’s Greg Kelly Says Jan. 6 ‘May Have Been False Flag Operation,’ After Looking Up What That Is

Newsmax’s primetime anchor Greg Kelly decided on Wednesday night to look-up the meaning of a “false flag operation” for his audience, to ensure his viewers clearly understand the latest conspiracy theories surrounding the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Kelly kicked off the segment saying, “Hey, have you heard? A lot of folks are starting to say January 6th — there’s a possibility that it was a false flag operation.”

“Now, do you know what a false flag operation is? I actually had to look it up,” Kelly continues and then reads out the definition from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

A hostile or harmful action that is designed to look like it was perpetrated by someone other than the person or group responsible for it. All right, interesting. And then you go after him because you say they’re responsible for it. Lot of folks out there are starting to connect the dots, and they’re saying January 6 may have been a false flag operation.

Kelly then cites a highly criticized letter from the Oregon Republican Party on January 19th as evidence of claims the January 6th insurrection was a “false flag operation.” 

While not mentioning it by name, Kelly’s comment about “folks starting” to talk about Jan. 6th as a “false flag” was more likely referencing Tucker Carlson’s three-part series Patriot Purge, which began airing this week on Fox Nation.

Kelly’s discussion of the “false flag” definition dog whistles at Carlson’s long pushed conspiracy theory, central in Patriot Purge, that the federal government worked to instigate the January 6th insurrection so that it could then persecute Trump supporters. 

The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum argues that Patriot Purge also serves “to describe the events of January 6 as a false-flag operation cooked up inside the deepest layers of the American deep state—and thus to cast doubt on everything that will come out of Congress’s January 6 hearings.” 

Kelly ends the segment calling into question the Congressional investigation into January 6th. 

“We’ve seen the video tapes, individuals that the FBI seems not interested in finding out anything about. People we saw agitating. Who are they?” he asks, before concluding, “These are the kinds of things that any commission or committee should look into. January 6th? No, they won’t. They just want to know about what Trump said in a speech in October. It’s not right.”