Mediaite founder and owner Dan Abrams spoke to editor in chief Aidan McLaughlin on the latest episode of Mediaite’s Press Club podcast about a conspiracy theory regarding the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol — debunking claims made by people including Stephen A. Smith and Vice President-elect JD Vance about the “confidential human sources” who were there that day.
Earlier this month, the Department of Justice’s inspector general released a report on the Jan. 6 attack, as reported by the Associated Press:
The watchdog report examined a number of areas, including whether major intelligence failures preceded the riot and whether the FBI in some way provoked the violence. Claims spreading online focus on the report’s finding that 26 FBI informants were in Washington for election-related protests on Jan. 6, including three who had been tasked with traveling to the city to report on others who were potentially planning to attend the events.
Although 17 of those informants either entered the Capitol or a restricted area around the building during the riot, none of the 26 total informants were authorized to do so by the bureau, according to the report. Nor were they authorized to otherwise break the law or encourage others to do so.
Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump and other social media users seized on the report’s confirmation of the presence of those informants, “misrepresenting” the report and “falsely claiming that it’s proof the FBI orchestrated the Capitol riot,” the AP’s Melissa Goldin wrote in a fact check.
Smith ranted about the report on his eponymous show, yelling that he was “pissed off” at the Democrats because this was “something else” that they “have lied about or downplayed or misrepresented along the way.” (Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who served on the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6, offered his own sharp retort debunking Smith’s claims.)
Vance tweeted about it as well, asserting that the report proved MAGA conspiracy theories. His post shared a screenshot of just two paragraphs from the entire report and added his comment, “For those keeping score at home, this was labeled a dangerous conspiracy theory months ago.”
Below, a lightly edited transcript of this segment of the conversation (beginning around 38:45 in the above video):
AIDAN MCLAUGHLIN: The Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report about the extent of the FBI involvement on January 6th. And the report found that there were no federal agents involved, which has been a conspiracy theory promoted by Trump and Tucker Carlson and a couple other people for the last couple of years. The point of the conspiracy theory is to absolve Trump of any guilt for January 6th and say that it was the feds that orchestrated it, I guess, to smear Trump or to catch his supporters in the act. Somehow the likes of JD Vance and Elon Musk have seized upon the Horowitz report, and they’ve said that it proves that conspiracy theory as true.
What did you make of this? And is there any truth to this conspiracy theory?
DAN ABRAMS: So we have to lay out what the conspiracy theory is. Right? I mean, JD Vance is claiming the conspiracy theory was that there were confidential human sources at January 6th — that’s not what the conspiracy theory was. The conspiracy theory was, that the FBI was behind January 6th and the FBI agents undercover were basically trying to encourage Trump supporters to do things that would get them in trouble, tried to get them to go into the building, tried to get them to do things.
This report specifically said that there were 26, I think, confidential human sources who were there. What does that mean? It means that they were people who — three of them — where the FBI knew they were there and the FBI was trying to get information on people they viewed as a threat. Those people, three of them in particular, went into the Capitol and these three confidential human sources followed them in. They went in with them. There’s no evidence, according to the inspector general report, that any of them encouraged action, nor were they told to do it.
And that’s the key question. The conspiracy is that the FBI instructed, ordered, encouraged these confidential human sources to do something bad. There’s no evidence of that.
And again — this is the pro-law enforcement part of me again — we need confidential sources. They help law enforcement around the country solve crimes. And the notion that they were there, no one said — it’s funny, you go back and you listen to Chris Wray’s testimony about this and he keeps saying, “sir, if you’re asking me,” he said, “if you’re asking me, were there undercover agents there? I don’t think there were any undercover agents there.”
And, you know, there’s a back and forth. And you can tell, in effect, Chris Wray’s saying, “you’re asking the wrong question.” Right? It’s not “you shouldn’t be asking me, were there undercover agents?” You should be asking me if there were confidential human sources. And then I’ll tell you, “I can’t answer your question” — because he was willing to answer the question. There weren’t any undercover agents.
So, you know, the notion that that report is being used to somehow back up the conspiracy, the FBI was somehow involved, is nonsense if you actually read it.
How do you think the media should approach covering the next four years? Because it is going to be a time where there is going to be headwinds both on the business side and on the editorial side. How do you think the media should approach covering [Trump]?
Well, I think that the media needs to try to restore credibility. Right. I — as you see, even as we’re talking about this, I will say things like, well, you know, I was opposed to them bringing that case or — you know, I think that there has to be some ability of the media to recognize successes that Trump has. Right? There will be successes for this administration. They may have a very successful Middle East policy. I don’t know. Donald Trump may come in and the war in Ukraine may end because Donald Trump forces them to sit down or whatever.
The media has to be able to not sit there and be, “ah, ah, we can’t even!” They have to be willing — even the people who hate Donald Trump — if you want to be seen as a remotely fair broker, you got to give credit where it’s due. And that allows you to then also criticize where it’s warranted.
The problem is the folks who just want to criticize because they hate Donald Trump so much. And I do think that there is a level of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” — people on the right use that term, I think there’s validity to that. I do think there is a level of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” among some that they are completely incapable of giving him credit for anything.
And you want to restore credibility? Try and call balls and strikes. Give him credit when it’s warranted. Recognize successes. I think that allows you then the freedom to criticize as well.
Watch the video above, via Mediaite’s Press Club on YouTube.
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