James Comer Falsely Suggests Rioters Were ‘Enticed’ by Undercover FBI Agents in Defense of January 6 Pardons on CNN
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) falsely suggested that undercover FBI agents may have “enticed” rioters into committing crimes during the January 6 Capitol riot during an interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown on Wednesday.
Bringing up the conversation around to the blanket pardon President Donald Trump has offered the rioters, Brown observed that “Some members of your own party, including Senators Thom Tillis and James Lankford, have criticized President Trump’s pardoning of violent January 6th offenders. I mean, some of these recipients battered police with a metal baton, a fire extinguisher, a stun gun, a pole, a wooden plank. You were at the Capitol that day, you’ve condemned the violence. Do you agree with those pardons?”
“Here’s the difference: Donald Trump campaigned and said he was going to pardon the January 6 people. I mean, he was very transparent about it,” answered Comer. “Unlike Joe Biden, who I believe went on CNN, I believe it was Jake Tapper’s show and said that he would never pardon his family and he would not issue any preemptive pardons. So there’s a difference Trump was transparent, he campaigned on this, said he was going to release the prisoners-”
“But not the, I guess it’s the broad swath. He did say — and that is true — he did say, ‘Look, I’m going to pardon them,’ but even his vice president, Pam Bondi and others said, and even Speaker Johnson said ‘If they were violent, they really shouldn’t get a pass.’ They’ve gotten this pass,” noted Brown.
“Yeah, one of the problems with this whole January 6th situation is the January 6th Committee. And we believe that they botched a lot of things. There’s a a significant percentage of Americans, especially conservative Americans, that believe that many of those rioters were enticed by undercover FBI agents and people within the FBI. The FBI has not been forthcoming. I don’t know if that’s true or not, Pam. But I don’t believe anything that the January 6th Committee wrote,” replied Comer.
He continued:
And when Joe Biden pardoned the whole January 6th Committee, which is unprecedented! Jamie Raskin, I know he’s been on CNN several times saying you should never pardon, you know, he was criticizing Matt Gaetz was wanting a pardon in the last Trump administration and he was just blasting. Well, he and Adam Schiff accepted pardons from Joe Biden! So the credibility of the January 6th Committee has been thrown out the door. And, you know, I think most Americans are confused what happened. Again, President Trump said he was going to do it, he did it.
Notably, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report last month in which he stated that his team “found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6.”
Horowitz found that 26 Confidential Human Sources — or defendants who engage “in the prohibited activity of associating with persons engaged in criminal activity for the purpose of furnishing information to or acting as an agent for a law enforcement or intelligence agency” — were present in D.C. on January 6, but that none “were authorized to enter the Capitol or a restricted area, or to otherwise break the law on January 6.”
“Nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6,” he added.
Watch above via CNN.
