Conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza recently spoke with guest Darren J. Beattie in an explosive interview exploring the FBI’s possible role in the Jan 6 storming of the Capitol.
During the latest episode of the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast, the publisher of the bombshell Revolver News article, titled "Unindicted Co-Conspirators in 1/6 Cases Raise Disturbing Questions of Federal Foreknowledge," explores with the eponymous host questions surrounding the FBI's involvement in the storming of the Capitol.
"The American people need to know the truth about 1/6," Beattie urges, noting that the truth matters to over 70 million Trump supporters and conservatives who have been declared "de facto domestic terrorists" by the federal government.
Revolver News, known as an investigative journalism site, published Beattie's piece last Monday that argued why Jan. 6 might have been an FBI set-up.
The breach of federal property in Washington has been framed as an egregious intelligence failure. Beattie considers the sinister possibility that the "January siege" was an establishment operation, not the result of mishandled intel.
Beattie begins the article noting that "[o]f all the questions asked, words spoken, and ink spilled" on Jan. 6, "none hold the key to the entire event quite like what Sen. Amy Klobuchar asked of [FBI Director] Christopher Wray."
The progressive Minnesota senator asked the Trump-appointed FBI director: Did the federal government infiltrate any of the so-called "militia" organizations claimed to be responsible for planning and executing the Capitol siege?
D'Souza rephrases Klobuchar's question, pressing Wray if he wished the FBI had infiltrated the Jan. 6 right-wing groups such as the Proud Boys, among others.
Beattie suggests in his writing that it is possible that the FBI did, in fact, have important information and might have even been among the instigators of the entire undertaking. The opening scene of the Revolver News article pictures Klobuchar inquiring about FBI infiltration, but also begging the question by poking, "Don't you wish you had?" Beattie explains. "Wouldn't it have been better if she just asked, 'Did you?' She just sets it up for [Wray] to evade the question..."
"Revolver News is neither as presumptuous nor is it as accommodating as Sen. Klobuchar," he says, noting that the content of the piece has gained steam nationwide in the media as well as at the congressional level.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (FL-01) has even written the direct questions that Revolver News pose in an official letter with multiple congressional signatories to Wray. The Florida lawmaker along with GOP Reps. Paul Gosar (AZ-04), Louie Gohmert (TX-01), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14), and Bill Posey (FL-08), are demanding transparency on the role the FBI operatives might have played in organizing and participating in the Capitol riot. The letter cites Revolver News for analyzing the FBI's involvement in the year leading up to and during the events of Jan. 6.
The representatives ask Wray to clarify to what extent were the three primary militia groups—the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters—infiltrated by agencies of the federal government, including the FBI, or informants.
Gaetz also asks how many federal undercover agents or confidential informants were present on Capitol grounds during the siege and if the operatives were "passive informants" or "active instigators." Of all the unindicted co-conspirators referenced in the Jan. 6 charging documents, how many worked as confidential informants or as an undercover operatives for the federal government, Gaetz questions, expecting an answer from Wray's office by Aug. 1.
Klobuchar's question at the March 2 hearing reinforces the left's "intelligence failure" thesis, Beattie writes. A months-long "bipartisan" Senate investigation arrived at the same conclusion to explain the breach of the Capitol, finding security and intelligence failures at every level of government.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee and the Senate Rules Committee's joint 95-page report on June 8 found problems ranging from federal intelligence agencies failing to warn of the potential for violence to insufficient planning and preparation by Capitol Police and law enforcement leadership. According to the five-month probe conducted by the committees, there was no overall operational or staffing plan for that fateful day, a complete failure of leadership.
"The narrative here is that the FBI was taken by surprise—the Capitol Police was taken by surprise. None of them knew this was coming," says D'Souza. "In a sense, that's bad, but what you say in the article is what would be even worse is if these guys not only knew about it, but were cooking it up. In other words, if they were actively involved in fomenting Jan. 6, at which point they could then turn around and get the political targets that they had actually set up in the first place."
Beattie states there are three possibilities to consider. One is the official story, which is "a fairly unbelievable story, but they've converged on this pretty strongly," explains Beattie. "And that is the 'intelligence failure' narrative. 'Oh, we just had no idea that there could be violence leading up to Jan. 6. We just completely dropped the ball. We had no intelligence along these lines.' That's why the Capitol basically had worst security on Jan. 6 than any other day," Beattie pokes at the argument.
He says the "intelligence failure" theory is "convenient" and "detracts" from the darker prospects the right has been scrutinizing. But also the solution is heightened surveillance capabilities, which tees the players up for the next ask: more funding for Patriot Act 2.0—except next time patriots will be targeted.
"Make no mistake: this new Patriot Act, this new weaponization of the national security state against MAGA-adjacent movements, which is the most important political development of the past decade, they're using Jan. 6 [...] as the pretext to declare all of us domestic terrorists..." Beattie states. The intent is to "weaponize" the national security infrastructure against the political opposition, he reiterates.
The second possibility is that authorities did infiltrate the right-wing groups, knew there was potential for violence to occur, yet allowed the chaos to unfurl.
Third, there were key members at senior positions within the purported militia groups associated with Jan. 6, listed as "Person X" and "Person Y" in the charging documents, who are federal operatives in some capacity, Beattie states. "I think the second and third possibilities are the most damning and by far the most likely."
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Beattie then touches upon the suspicious inconsistencies within the charging documents of those who were and those we were not indicted. D'Souza calls the documentation "a telling clue" as to how to referee among these possibilities.
A careful study of the "unindicted co-conspirators" by Revolver News reveals that many of the individuals appear to be "much more aggressive and egregious participants" in the "conspiracy," serving as the basis for charging those indicted.
D'Souza counts 20 un-indicted co-conspirators, "but there could be more," that Beattie cites in the Revolver News article. The phenomenon is against the backdrop of Attorney General Merrick Garland vowing to leave no stone unturned, pursue all suspects, hold the culprits accountable, and send a strict message.
It's not a case of "the small fish reporting on the big fish," D'Souza states, since unindicted "Person Three" reserved and paid for various Oath Keeper hotel rooms.
"Indeed, the curious lack of indictments filed against the entire gamut of Persons referenced as playing leadership roles within the Oath Keepers on 1/6 raises red flags," Beattie writes in the Revolver News piece. For example, while Oath Keeper and transgender bar owner Jessica Watkins is inside the mezzanine of the Capitol, she is being "directed, encouraged and egged on by 'an individual' whose identity the DOJ clearly knows," since authorities stipulate that the "individual" had "participated in at least one prior Oath Keeper operation," Beattie pens.
Beattie pivots to the "shock and awe standard" of prosecution, referring to the merciless prosecutorial campaign described by then-Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin. The federal prosecutor who was leading the criminal investigation into the Capitol Hill riot invoked phraseology from the Iraq War in an interview on 60 Minutes in late March. "I wanted to ensure, and our office wanted to ensure, that there was shock and awe. That we could charge as many people as possible before [Jan.] 20," Sherwin states on-air.
The "shock and awe standard" was equipped in the DOJ's alleged "conspiracy" case against 39-year-old sandwich shop owner George Tanios who was with fellow companion Julian Khater. The two have been charged with nine criminal counts for actions taken on Jan. 6 just outside the steps of the Capitol building.
The most serious charge was assault on an officer with a dangerous weapon, arising from Khater's alleged use of Tanios's chemical spray to tag Officer Brian Sicknick and two other officers in the face during the ensuing melee.
The chief medical examiner confirmed in April that the deceased Capitol Hill police officer suffered two strokes and died of natural causes. Sicknick died one day after Jan. 6, prompting multiple media outlets to falsely report that he was murdered by pro-Trump rioters. The New York Times and Associated Press, for example, reported that Sicknick was bludgeoned to death via fire extinguisher. The sensational claims were repeated by numerous left-wing cable news networks.
Tanios was not inside the Capitol, did not use any bear spray himself, had bear spray in his backpack and when Khater reached in to take it out, Tanios tried to stop Khater; prosecutors now acknowledge that Khater never even used the bear spray, Revolver News reports. Tanios was still slapped with 60 years worth of stacking "conspiracy" charges because he said, "Hold on, hold on, not yet, not yet."
After the initial fire extinguisher hoax was debunked, the narrative transitioned from "murdered by MAGA" to "died from injuries caused by MAGA," Beattie writes. The crux of the prosecution's case relied upon surveillance video footage, plus corroborating officer body cam footage, showing Khater spraying Sicknick and two other officers with chemical spray. But neither the surveillance video nor the body cam footage was made available to the public at first.
While the 11-page criminal complaint and the 65-page FBI special agent affidavit both refer to the same six screenshots purporting to be video frames from the surveillance and body cam footage, none of the screenshots show the "money shot" where Khater is alleged to spray the officers, Beattie points out.
Ten weeks after Jan. 6, there was still no toxicology report, no autopsy results, and no cause of death identified for Sicknick. Now, the importance of bear spray in relation to the Sicknick death narrative is moot, Beattie states.
President Joe Biden still mischaracterized Sicknick's death as recent as Wednesday, contradicting the medical examiner's report by claiming the Capitol Police officer was killed by "criminals" who stormed the Capitol building.
D'Souza notes that Biden, while answering questions at the Geneva press conference following the bilateral summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, told reporters that it was "ridiculous" to compare the events of Jan. 6 to the opposition protests that Putin used to maintain power and jail political dissidents.
"I found it really telling that Biden as late as [Wednesday] was still repeating the Sicknick lie, and in this case, I can't attribute it to his senility; I think this is actually malicious," comments D'Souza.
The first suspicious individuals Revolver News investigated are "Person Two" and "Person Three" who are unindicted co-conspirators in the indictment against 65-year-old Thomas Caldwell, an alleged member of the Oath Keepers, which the DOJ refers to as a "paramilitary" or "militia" group. The Caldwell case served as one of the first major indictments following the Jan. 6 incident. Beattie notices that "Person Two" listed in the indictment was a key co-conspirator alongside Caldwell in almost dimension relevant to the charges in question.
"Person Two" planned logistics with Caldwell days in advance of Jan. 6, stayed in the same hotel room for days together, and when Caldwell "stormed the barricades" into restricted areas outside the Capitol building, "Person Two" is alleged to have "stormed the barricades" right beside the Oath Keeper.
But five months since the alleged acts, only Caldwell has been charged. "Person Two," for some mysterious reason, Beattie writes, remains unindicted.
"Why is that? Why is it the case that 'Person Two' has somehow escaped prosecution when his culpability would appear to be the same?" D'Souza asks.
Beattie says the reason why the unindicted co-conspirators are important is because the Revolver News investigative team recognizes that compared to the "shock and awe standard" applied to the sandwich shop owner facing 60 years, it's bizarre that the unidentified individuals in the charging documents "who seem to have done as bad, if not worse," than those charged have walked away unscathed.
"We are exploring the possibility that some of those people may be unindicted as a result of a prior relation with the federal government," Beattie states. He then emphasizes two caveats. "Revolver News is not making the claim that every single person, who is unindicted, who is referenced, in the charging document is some federal agent," Beattie stresses. "That is not what we're saying."
Beattie underscores that Revolver News is not calling for the prosecution of the unindicted co-conspirators. "If it turns out, and it may very well turn out, that the unindicted people are not involved with the federal government, and many may not be, I am not saying that the government should go after them."
"I think the 'shock and awe standard' of prosecution itself is an outrage," Beattie states, pointing instead to the discrepancies and using the prosecutorial inconsistencies as "an entry point" to the discussion of federal infiltration.
"That's why they're freaking out. We're striking at the heart of the issue," Beattie adds. "Was this an intelligence failure? Or was this an intelligence set-up?"
One of the strong indicators that it was the latter, D'Souza adds, is that the FBI "seems to have done this before." D'Souza spotlights the parallel between Jan. 6 and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's almost-kidnapping.
Three months before Jan. 6, the FBI arrested 14 suspects for plotting to kidnap Whitmer and overthrow the state's government, which involved the storming of the state's Capitol building. Of the arrestees, at least five were undercover agents and federal informants, Revolver News reports, and many of the accused individuals appear to belong to the same Three Percenters.
D'Souza outlines the details that the public now knows about the Whitmer kidnapping scheme. During one of the plot's climactic scenes, in the van driving to surveille Whitmer's vacation house, three out of the five individuals in the vehicle—60 percent of the plot's senior leaders—were undercover agents and operatives.
The FBI and DOJ went to great lengths to conceal the fact that the fifth man in the van, "an individual from Wisconsin," was an undercover federal informant, Revolver News reports, who organized the initial June 6, 2020, meeting in Dublin, Ohio, where the entire Michigan plot was said to be hatched. The person of interest even paid for the hotel rooms of the attendees, according to Revolver News.
The defense counsel alleges that it was an undercover FBI operative who organized and paid for the hotel rooms during the key planning meeting on June 6, 2020. An undercover FBI operative was the recipient of hand-drawn maps from the alleged plotters on the reconnaissance missions, Revolver News reports.
"I think this is the cherry on the cake: the FBI used similar language that you now find in the Jan. 6 [charging] documents to hide the identities and to hide the extent of the fact that the FBI was in on this from the beginning," D'Souza says.
The director of the Detroit FBI field office, who oversaw the infiltration operation of the Whitmer plot, was then granted a promotion to the Washington office, where he is now the lead FBI agent for all of the Jan. 6 cases, Beattie writes.
"So we have the same plot, the same militia group, and we have the same guy," Beattie tells D'Souza, noting that days after the Michigan arrests, Detroit FBI field office chief Steven D'Antuono was promoted to the bureau's coveted Washington post. Wray made the assistant director-in-charge announcement following D'Antuono's agents and state police apprehension of the abduction plot.
Beattie says that the striking similarities between events "charges up our intuition and reinforces our sense of pressing plausibility..." Beattie states the no one was talking about Jan. 6 in relation to the Michigan case, finding the lack of awareness "troubling," because the disconnect "shows just how easily controlled we are by the fact that we have zero attention span. We forget things the next day..."
D'Souza observes that the left's allies are employing objections and explanations while the revelations are "boomeranging" back at the federal level. He first examines an article published by anti-Trump publication The Bulwark, titled, "The FBI Did It? LOL: Understanding MAGA's newest insurrection conspiracy theory."
The Bulwark argues, regurgitating Twitter's statement, that federal law doesn't permit cooperating witnesses or informants to be charged with conspiracy, despite "a baseless suggestion" by Fox News host Tucker Carlson that several of the co-conspirators were not charged because they're undercover FBI agents.
"Well that is false along a number of dimensions," Beattie responds. "It's a matter of basic logic [...] I consider it an insult to have opposition that is this mediocre and low class and low status." He adds that he wants an in-depth objection that is on the same intellectual level as the Revolver News breakdown.
Beattie underlines that it's suspicious that the unindicted individuals noted in the charging documents, who seem to be "more egregious" and "more culpable" than those charged, are not facing prosecution. The opposing stance insists that "the government doesn't charge its own informants." Beattie then touts vindication.
"That's precisely why it's suspicious," Beattie says of the opposition's self-own.
The opposing argument is also wrong as an empirical and practical matter; the government does charge its own agents, Beattie notes. The "individual from Wisconsin," also referenced throughout the Michigan plot courts documents, is the longtime government mole Steve Robeson, he highlights. Revolver News reports that in November 2020, one month after the October 2020 indictment was filed, Robeson spilled on livestream: "I am the individual from Wisconsin."
Robeson had been penetrating right-wing patriot, militia groups as an undercover secret informant for the federal government for over 35 years, Revolver News cites.
In a possible preview of what might happen for some of the unindicted Jan. 6 co-conspirators, the FBI-DOJ burned Robeson, by hitting the man with a 10-year charge for owning a firearm as a convicted child molester, Revolver News reports.
It's presumed that the government was angered that Robeson outed himself and thus comprised the investigation, Beattie states, and the scam factor is reinforced.
Beattie emphasizes that the FBI does not hesitate to target its own informants when the individuals step out of line. The situation isn't static; it's an "iterative" and "dynamic" process, "a chess game" that's been set into motion, Beattie states, accenting that there'll be conversations within the bureau that consider potential indictments of the unindicted co-conspirators now that there's active buzz.
The hypothetical negotiations will attempt to convince the informants, who may squeal about the relationship, that the foreseeable charges serve as cover, he says.
"It's that even if it were true, it's not exculpatory," The Bulwark article concludes.
D'Souza explains that The Bulwark writer concedes that the operation could have been engineered by the feds, but maintains that the indicted suspects still participated and worked hand-in-hand with the alleged FBI operatives.
"Nevertheless, the full blame falls on the Trumpsters. It doesn't fall on the feds," D'Souza breaks down The Bulwark's refutation, which defends the federal government for not "intend[ing] to break the law," just setting up the indicted suspects "to bring out the lawless tendencies" within the arrestees.
D'Souza asks Beattie, "What does it mean for a free society where we essentially authorize the federal government to unleash these kinds of fake operatives to engineer operations and then go, 'Aha! We gotcha!' You participated in the bank robbery that we, ourselves, orchestrated and helped you set up'?"
Beattie says he's willing to predict the narrative development that will ensue following the bombshell. The developing story is at Step One: The feds didn't infiltrate the MAGA militia groups blamed for Jan. 6. Step Two of the narrative admits that there was slight federal infiltration, but downplays the concern. Step Three admits that there was infiltration but justifies the FBI's role. Step Four: the people causing alarm about the said FBI infiltration are labeled "the real problem."
The politics in the country are going to be "fake" and "performative" until the intelligence national security apparatus is back in line, Beattie says, warning that we won't have "a real country, a free country" until then.
Beattie then calls for another Church Committee, in which the original Senate committee in 1975 investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, FBI, and the Internal Revenue Service. "We need to get serious, principled people on the left—serious, principled people on the right to understand: we do not have a free country in America until the intelligence apparatus, including the FBI, is put in its proper place," Beattie concludes.
D'Souza applauds Beattie, urging that he ought to be congratulated for the extensive, investigative reporting that Revolver News has published.
"At the end of the day, what gets people to take notice isn't just punditry, isn't just interpretation, it's the new revelation of facts," D'Souza tells Beattie.
