The Jan. 6 Capitol attack has already produced a swamp of conspiracy theories, but MAGA loyalists found new fuel this week, and Adam Kinzinger wasn’t about to let them get away with it.
On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an unprecedented attempt to overturn a democratic election, making it the most shameful display of self-coup in modern American history. The insurrection triggered over 1,600 federal prosecutions, most of which were swept away in mass clemency once Trump clawed his way back into the presidency this year.
Now, a recently released FBI report has become MAGA’s latest toy. The document revealed that 274 plainclothes agents were deployed to the Capitol on Jan. 6. Almost instantly, right-wing operatives began twisting it into a claim that the FBI itself provoked or even orchestrated the riots. Trump amplified the nonsense on Truth Social, posting the report with his trademark all-caps sneer: “Wow. A Radical Left Democrat Scam.”
The Republican-led Select Subcommittee on January 6 then plastered the report across X, deliberately captioning it in a way that suggested federal agents were secretly embedded in the crowd. Kinzinger, however, wasn’t having it. The former Republican congressman torched the MAGA crowd with his trademark bluntness: “Of course, because they were responding to an insurrection you guys launched. Are you honestly this stupid?” His takedown echoed a broader fact-check from Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney, who flatly said the claims were “wildly misrepresented.”
“These were not undercover agents embedded in the crowd. They were part of the multi-agency law enforcement response after the Capitol was attacked, as the documents themselves make clear,” Cheney posted on X
The Department of Justice itself has also debunked the claim, stressing that there was no covert FBI presence planted in the crowd before rioters breached the Capitol. Kinzinger’s sharp rebuke shows how far the pro-Trump faction has drifted from reality. He has made it loud and clear that the Jan. 6 riot wasn’t an FBI setup. It was a MAGA mob, unleashed by Trump.
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