Ex-terrorism official under Trump blames government for Jan. 6: 'Like Waco, Texas or Ruby Ridge'

A man who called into C-SPAN's Washington Journal program claimed to be a former government official who warned the FBI about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The Republican caller named Tom introduced himself as a former employee of the Director of National Intelligence during a call-in program about former President Donald Trump's culpability for the Jan. 6 attacks.

"I was the senior collection strategist for domestic terrorism at the Director of National Intelligence from Oct. of 2020 to Jan. of 2021," Tom said. "And during that time, I personally warned the FBI domestic terrorism task force about a potential for what in the military we call a black swan. And a black swan is a [sic] event that you can't anticipate, you can't plan for but in the military, we use that term so that we can come up with ideas that might spin out of control."

"So these things were floated to the FBI way early," he insisted. "The question we have to be asking is whether or not Trump did this. What we need to be asking ourselves is why is [sic] hundreds or thousands of Americans willing to converge on Washington because they believe the election was stolen?"

Tom said that he did not believe that the election was "stolen" but that there were unconstitutional actions taken "that can only be resolved by the Supreme Court."

"Findings I came to as a conclusion that led so many thousands of Americans to converge on Washington, D.C. was, number one, our government officials have to have absolute true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution."

He claimed that Jan. 6 rioters were "motivated" by government investigations into Trump.

"A lot of people went to Washington in support of the president because of the FBI counterintelligence investigation, the Russia collusion investigation, all things that were carried out by the government against the sitting president that motivated people to attend the rally," he opined.

Tom went on to offer his thoughts on the problem of gun violence, blaming it on a "mental health crisis." He claimed that gun violence is "used to go after the Second Amendment which motivates people be very defensive against elements of the Constitution that otherwise will not be defended. So we've got to focus on the mental health crisis."

Tom also compared the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election to government actions at Ruby Ridge and Waco.

"You've got to be honest," he remarked. "If the government makes a mistake like Waco, Texas or Ruby Ridge or a counterintelligence investigation against Carter Page or against Donald Trump or whatever or Watergate or whatever the government mistake is if the government immediately comes out and says, hey, look, we made a mistake, we screwed this up it shouldn't have gone this way."

"Then you would not have a lot of these conspiracy theories that come up that are people trying to find out what really happened," he concluded.

C-SPAN host Bill Scanlan let Tom rant for nearly five minutes before cutting him off without a fact check.

The caller claimed to be Mr. Thomas A. Speciale II, who authored a 50-page paper offered by Amazon. The paper is titled "Inside the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Strategy:: Understanding the threats to our Republic."

Watch the video below from C-SPAN or at this link.