WASHINGTON – With House hearings underway on the Jan. 6 riot, Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday dusted off an ominous but unfounded conspiracy theory suggesting that the FBI incited the attack aimed at keeping Donald Trump in power.
“Is the kangaroo court in the House willing to press hard and get REAL answers as to what happened with the FBI on January 6? Or is this circus simply a failed Democrat campaign commercial?” Cruz tweeted to his 5.2 million followers.
The Texas Republican issued his challenge alongside video of his exchange with a senior FBI official during a February Senate hearing, at which he speculated that a former FBI informant had acted as an agent provocateur.
Cruz’s office provided no evidence, then or on Tuesday.
This “fed-surrection” theory is sharply at odds with allegations and evidence offered by the House select committee, whose members have accused Trump of inflaming the mob, and the Justice Department, which regards the Proud Boys as key instigators of the violence.
Cruz organized and led a group of senators who tried to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory the day of the riot.
And he’d offered to help Trump promote claims the election had been stolen by arguing for him at the Supreme Court, though the litigation never got that far.
The House Jan. 6 panel devoted much of its first hearings emphasizing that Trump knew his claims about widespread election fraud were lies.
His campaign manager and other top aides testified that they’d tried to persuade him to accept the reality of his defeat. The attorney general at the time, Bill Barr, recounted during video testimony that he’d told Trump the claims were “bull----.”
The hearings have already displayed evidence of a conspiracy by pro-Trump forces that led to the attack on the Capitol.
On Thursday night, a documentary film-maker showed footage of a furtive meeting in a parking garage the night before the riot between the Proud Boys’ national chairman, Enrique Tarrio, and Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government militia group.
The Justice Department has described the Proud Boys as “directing” and “mobilizing” the crowd to march on the Capitol and enter the building.
The theory Cruz referred to – one theory the House hearings have not explored so far and probably won’t – holds that the nation’s prime law enforcement agency prodded supporters of the defeated president to attack Capitol police, smash doors, invade the Senate chamber and threaten the vice president and House speaker.
No evidence has surfaced for this explosive theory.
Throughout his presidency, Trump often complained that the “deep state,” including entrenched interests at the FBI, was working against him.
Cruz and others who promote the false flag theory have not explained why the FBI would be on both sides – hunting down rioters after encouraging sedition trying to prolong the Trump presidency.
FBI director Christopher Wray, under oath two months after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, ruled out that there were “fake Trump protesters” of any kind in the mob.
Another top FBI official told Cruz at a Jan. 11 hearing that no federal agents incited violence.
He remained unpersuaded, promoting the exchange in at least a dozen fundraising emails, on his popular podcast and again Tuesday, on Twitter.
“If the federal government was actively encouraging illegal conduct, was actively encouraging violence,” Cruz said on an episode of his podcast devoted to the “false flag” theory, “that is incredibly concerning, because it is an abuse of power.”
‘False flag’ theory
Claims that Jan. 6 was a “false flag” operation began to simmer in right-wing circles while the riot was underway.
The initial spin was that Antifa or other leftists infiltrated a peaceful crowd to embarrass Trump.
Trump supporters in the mob were indignant.
Claims that the FBI incited the riot took life a year ago this week.
Revolver News – a website run by Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter who left his job after revelations he’d attended a conference with white supremacists – speculated that “unindicted co-conspirators” mentioned in court were actually undercover federal operatives.
That, said the article, made Jan. 6 “a monumental entrapment scheme” meant to “frame the entire MAGA movement as potential domestic terrorists.”
Fox News star Tucker Carlson Carlson told viewers “it sounds like the FBI was organizing the riots of Jan. 6.”
“This is like, Putin kind of activities,” Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, said on the House floor, asserting that protesters were “egged on by federal authorities.”
Cruz joined the conspiracy crowd on the anniversary of the riot, under fire from right-wing commentators for referring to Jan. 6 as “a violent terrorist attack” at a Senate hearing.
Cruz walked back the comment the next evening on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News. Even if his language sounded like Democratic rhetoric, he said, only the relative handful of rioters who assaulted police were terrorists.
Carlson accused him of lying about his remorse. Then he broached the provocateur theory, which centers on a man named Ray Epps.
On Oct. 25, Revolver News identified Epps as a “Fed-Protected Provocateur” who “Appears To Have Led” the riot.
Epps owns a ranch and wedding venue called the Knotty Barn in Queen Creek, Ariz. In 2011 he led the Arizona chapter of Oath Keepers.
Footage from Jan. 6 shows a man named Ryan Samsel charging at one of the first police barriers to fall that day, just after Epps whispered into his ear.
Samsel and Epps have both told federal investigators that Epps was urging Samsel to calm down, and reminding him that police were only doing their jobs.
Footage from the night before the riot showed Epps at a rally urging protesters to “peacefully” enter the Capitol, advice that prompted a man nearby to start chanting “Fed! Fed! Fed!”
The chanting man has been identified as Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet, a far-right social media personality who addressed the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Va., that involved a torch parade of neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us.” He’s been charged with violent entry, disorderly conduct and illegally entering a restricted building on Jan. 6.
Much of the Epps conspiracy theory hinges on the fact that he appeared, unidentified, on a most wanted list two days after the riot, but was later removed and has never been charged.
Epps contacted the FBI when he realized he was being sought and, by all accounts, he was cleared – not because he was working with the FBI, but because he didn’t enter the Capitol that day or have any role in the riot.
“For him to appear on the FBI’s most wanted list and come off, it certainly suggests he was working for the FBI. That’s not conclusive, but that’s the obvious implication,” Cruz told Carlson during his damage-control appearance.
At a Senate hearing five days later, Cruz hammered the incitement-by-feds theory as he questioned Jill Sanborn, head of the FBI’s national security branch.
How many FBI agents or confidential informants participated in the events of Jan. 6?
“I’m sure that you can appreciate that I can’t go into the specifics of sources or methods,” she responded.
Did any FBI agents or informants take part? Did any encourage or incite violence?
“I can’t answer that,” she said, again deflecting.
“Ms. Sanborn, a lot of Americans are concerned that the federal government deliberately encouraged illegal and violent conduct on Jan. 6,” he said. “Did federal agents or those in service of federal agents actively encourage violent and criminal conduct on Jan. 6?”
This time, she gave a direct answer: “Not to my knowledge, sir.”
Within days, Cruz was featuring the exchange in fundraising emails.
“I grilled a senior FBI official- and she REFUSED to answer key questions,” he wrote. “Was Ray Epps a federal agent or informant? Did ANY FBI agents or confidential informants actively participate in the events that day? What are they trying to hide now about the events of January 6, 2021?”
Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the two Republicans on the House Jan. 6 committee, called Cruz’s emails “an absolute lie.”
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