By Steve Neavling
Some FBI agents may have felt “sympathetic” toward the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters and would not be enthusiastic about bringing cases against the insurrectionists, someone warned the bureau in an email.
The emailer, who appears to be a former bureau employee, warned that some agents believed the riot was no different than the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020.
“There’s no good way to say it, so I’ll just be direct: from my first-hand and second-hand information from conversations since January 6th there is, at best, a sizable percentage of the employee population that felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol,” the email states.
“Several also lamented that the only reason this violent activity is getting more attention is because of ‘political correctness.’”
The email was disclosed as part of a Freedom of Information Act request, NBC News reports.
“I literally had to explain to an agent from a ‘blue state’ office the difference between opportunists burning and looting during protests that stemmed legitimate grievance to police brutality vs. an insurgent mob whose purpose was to prevent the execution of democratic processes at the behest of a sitting president,” the person wrote to Paul Abbate, who is now the bureau’s deputy director. “One is a smattering of criminals, the other is an organized group of domestic terrorists.”
The FBI declined to comment on the email.
