FBI Official Nukes Key Capitol Riot Narrative, 'To My Knowledge' Zero Firearms Confiscated
A top FBI official investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol testified before the Senate on Wednesday that no firearms were confiscated that day.
The admission certainly undermines the “armed insurrection” narrative the Democrats and their allies in the establishment media have been pushing for the past two months.
The image that an armed insurrection calls to mind is firearms, not the makeshift weapons some of the rioters employed that day, such as bear spray and a flagpole.
FBI Assistant Director of Counterterrorism Jill Sanborn told a joint hearing of the Senate Rules and Homeland Security committees that 300 people have been charged so far with various crimes due to their conduct on Jan. 6.
Of them, 40 have been charged with assault. Other crimes have included disorderly conduct and trespassing, Sanborn said.
“How many firearms were confiscated in the Capitol or on the Capitol grounds that day?” GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked the FBI official.
“To my knowledge, we have not recovered any on that day from any of the arrests at the scene at this point,” Sanborn answered.
Sen Johnson asks FBI official how many firearms were confiscated from suspects arrested at Capitol riot on January 6. ‘To my knowledge, none,’ official answers.
— Byron York (@ByronYork) March 3, 2021
“But I don’t want to speak on behalf of Metro and Capitol Police, but to my knowledge, none,” she said.
Johnson confirmed again with Sanborn that nobody had been charged with having a firearm in the Capitol or Capitol grounds.
“Correct,” she answered. “The closest we came was the vehicle that had the Molotov cocktails in it, and when we did a search of that vehicle later on, there was a weapon.”
Presumably, based on her answer, that vehicle was some distance away.
Having worked at the Capitol and visited many times since, I know there isn’t any public parking within at least a few block radius of the Capitol grounds.
“How many shots were fired that we know of?” Johnson also wanted to know.
“I believe the only shots that were fired were the ones that resulted in the death of the one lady,” Sanborn answered.
That lady was 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was unarmed.
Federal authorities reportedly opened an excessive force investigation into her death last month.
Sanborn’s testimony definitely shoots a big, fat hole in the narrative that the rioters engaged in an “armed insurrection,” at least in the commonly understood meaning of the phrase.
What happened on Jan. 6 was entirely unacceptable, and the lawbreakers should be prosecuted.
But let’s not make it more than it was, which was the misguided conduct of a relative few thugs among the hundreds of thousands of former President Donald Trump’s supporters in Washington that day.
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