(RightIsRight.co) – The FBI had eight informants inside the Proud Boys group and another one inside the Oath Keepers in the months before the January 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol by a crowd of Trump supporters, court documents have revealed.
The existence of the FBI informants infiltrating the right-wing groups was exposed by the lawyers of five Proud Boy members who are about to go on trial on charges of seditious conspiracy next month.
The five men whose trial is set for December 12 are Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, Dominic Pezzola, and the former Proud Boys leader, Enrique Tarrio.
“In the heavily redacted court papers, the lawyers claimed prosecutors improperly withheld some information and confidential sources until several days ago,” Newsmax wrote in a report.
A sealed court filing showed US prosecutors insisted that hundreds of pages of documents on the FBI informants were never “suppressed” by the federal government but also that they were not directly relevant to the five men’s cases.
“It is unknown what the informants told the government about the Proud Boys’ role at the Capitol since the information is under a highly restrictive protective order,” the report pointed out.
Earlier this week, on Monday, a closed-court hearing a Washington, DC, US District Court discussed the role of the eight FBI informants with the Proud Boys during events before and during January 6, 2021.
According to the court papers, the Proud Boys members’ lawyers asked US District Judge Timothy Kelly to kill the indictment or postpone the trial until a full investigation was conducted. However, the papers show Kelly made no decision.
The report noted that the FBI had at least one informant inside the inner circle of the Oath Keepers leader, Stewart Rhodes, also present during the 1/6 events.
Rhodes is also being tried on sedition charges together with four Oath Keepers members. The five defendants even called the informant – Greg McWhirter – as a defense witness.
However, McWhirter, the group’s former vice president, had a heart attack on the eve of the testimony.
Information from court documents also indicates that some Proud Boys members, such as Joseph Biggs, were recruited by the FBI to give the bureau insights into the far-left militant movement Antifa.
According to a 2021 report by The New York Times, an FBI informant in the Proud Boys’ chapter in Kansas City took part in the 1/6 storming of the US Capitol.
However, after the breach of the US Congress grounds, he said he didn’t know of any “premeditated plan to seize” the Capitol.
In Monday’s hearing, Biggs’ lawyer, J. Daniel Hull, questioned “whether a Proud Boy conspiracy plan to obstruct the Biden-Harris vote certification or to commit sedition ever existed or could have existed.”
US prosecutors would seek to prove that the five Proud Boys defendants “knowingly agreed to use force” to prevent lawful power transfer after the 2020 election.
The FBI has been found to have eight informants inside the Proud Boys in the months surrounding the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to recent court documentation. https://t.co/GpenJw09zV
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) November 15, 2022
