Over and over again, the Justice Department and FBI officials have denied knowing that the Capitol would be attacked on January 6th by violent protestors.
According to a report by The Washington Post, this is not true.
The FBI was aware that an attack would occur because one of its field offices in Norfolk, Virginia released an internal warning predicting the attack the day before it happened.
The memo issued by the Norfolk office explained that extremists were planning an attack on Congress, that they had been sharing maps of the Capitol’s tunnels, and that they had been organizing for “war” on social media.
One post that was cited said, “Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Antifa slave soldiers being spilled.”
After receiving the memo, the FBI says that it notified other law enforcement agencies in DC through the Joint Terrorism Task Force, including the U.S. Capitol Police.
Nevertheless, the Capitol was woefully under guarded when the attack occurred.
Citizens doubted the FBI’s claims of ignorance considering how easy it was to dig up social media posts planning the attack, most notably on right-wing platforms like Parler. These posts planned a terrorist attack and yet weren’t taken seriously.
New social media posts have already emerged planning future violent riots.
Twitter released a statement that “Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021” which motivated them to suspend Donald Trump’s Twitter account permanently. There are also already violent riots planned for January 20, 2021, Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day.
Whether this time around the social media threats and planning will be taken seriously by law enforcement is yet to be seen, but reasonable to be hoped for.
