US intelligence investigating whether FBI involved in 2021 Capitol riot

(This April 9 story has been corrected to fix the name to Kent, instead of Kelly, in paragraph 9)

By Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. spy's chief of staff on Wednesday said the U.S. intelligence community is investigating whether the FBI was involved in planning the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.

"We're looking into it right now," Joseph Kent, chief of staff to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, said during a Senate intelligence committee hearing on his nomination to head the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center.

He did not elaborate on which of the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies is conducting the probe. Gabbard oversees the FBI's intelligence functions.

A U.S. Justice Department watchdog report released in December debunked claims by far-right conspiracy theorists who falsely alleged that FBI operatives were secretly involved in the Capitol attack.

The report found there were 26 FBI informants in Washington on the day of the attack. But, it said, the FBI did not authorize any to enter the Capitol or engage in violence.

Kent's comments came in response to questions from Democratic Senator Mark Kelly about the attack by Trump supporters trying to prevent Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden's 2020 presidential election victory.

Trump falsely claimed he lost the contest due to widespread voting fraud. In January, he pardoned more than 1,500 people charged in the assault by a mob of his supporters who stormed the Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to overturn his election defeat. 

Kelly asked Kent, a former Green Beret and CIA officer and staunch Trump loyalist, what evidence he had to back up a post on what is now the social media platform X that the FBI and U.S. spy agencies were involved in planning the assault on Congress.

"We've already identified that there were multiple confidential human informants run by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies that were present in the crowd that day, directing, removing barriers, those types of things," Kent said. "That has been investigated widely. We continue to look into that intelligence."

He alleged that the FBI and law enforcement elements that he did not identify "attempted to suppress the fact" that informants were among the thousands of rioters.

Information that forewarned of violence indicated that there had been "some degree of intelligence infiltration" of groups who stormed the Capitol, he said.

Kent said that it "probably" was the bureau's Washington Field Office that was involved and that it was "being looked into" by the intelligence community.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Gabbard’s office referred to her announcement on Tuesday that a new task force she has formed is “executing” Trump’s executive orders to rebuild trust in the intelligence community “starting with investigating weaponization, rooting out deep-seeded politicization, exposing unauthorized disclosures of classified intelligence, and declassifying information that serves a public interest.”

Gabbard campaigned for Kent during his failed 2022 run to represent Washington state's 3rd congressional district.

He was quoted by local media as questioning the validity of Biden's victory and called the Capitol attack an "intelligence operation," and rioters charged in the assault "political prisoners."

Several Democratic senators questioned Kent about his participation in a group chat on the Signal messaging app in which top Trump national security officials discussed plans for March 15 airstrikes against Houthi militants in Yemen.

Kent said that material posted in the chat was unclassified, but he declined to answer questions, saying the matter is the subject of litigation.

The Pentagon's Inspector General's office announced earlier this month that it was opening a probe into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's use of Signal to coordinate the strikes. 

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; additional reporting by Erin Banco; Editing by Don Durfee and Sonali Paul)