FBI, HSEMA, Secret Service, DC Police, and Capitol Police shared notice of a website, Red State Secession, that urged its visitors to post the home and work addresses of Democratic Members of Congress and “political enemies” under the title, “Why the Second American Revolution Starts Jan 6.”[39] It asked for their routes to and from the January 6th congressional certification because “the crowd will be looking for enemies.”[40]
The FBI was uploading to, and tagging in, its system incoming information from all FBI field offices about January 6th under the label, “CERTUNREST2021.” While the incoming information was reviewed on a regular basis by the Washington Field Office, “unified monitoring” of the items in the aggregate didn’t begin until January 5th.[41] That same day, the FBI captured a January 6th-related threat that warned a “Quick Reaction Force” of Trump supporters was preparing for January 6th in Virginia with weapons and prepared “to respond to ‘calls for help’” in the event that “protesters believed the police were not doing their job,” and a “Situation Incident Report” from FBI’s Norfolk Field Office warned of a “war” on January 6th.[42] While Capitol Police leadership received neither warning until after the attack,[43] Assistant Director Farnam, USCP intelligence unit, warned that Congress would be the target on January 6th. She noted that a “sense of desperation and disappointment may lead to more of an incentive to become violent. Unlike previous post-election protests, Congress itself is the target on the 6th.”[44] The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, remembers Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist expressing a similar view based on the social media traffic in early January 2021: “Norquist says . . . [t]he greatest threat is a direct assault on the Capitol. I’ll never forget it.”[45]
DISCUSSION OF THE POTENTIAL FOR VIOLENCE
Federal and local agencies agreed that there was a potential for violence on January 6th. As noted above, the intelligence leading up to January 6th did not support a conclusion that Antifa or other left-wing groups would likely engage in a violent counter-demonstration, or attack President Trump’s supporters on January 6th. In fact, none of these groups was involved to any material extent with the attack on the Capitol on January 6th.
That said, certain witnesses testified that they believed that there would be violence with Antifa or similar counter protest groups. President Trump’s National Security Advisor, Robert O’Brien, said the White House saw a risk of violence from counter-protesters.[46] Then Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolfe said that his “main concern [. . .] at the time was what we had seen throughout the summer and throughout the fall, which was you were going to have groups on either side, and so you were going to have counterprotests. And usually where those counterprotests interacted was where you had the violence.”[47]
