'Really unacceptable': FBI blasted after new watchdog report

A report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that neither FBI Director Christopher Wray nor Attorney General Merrick Garland has conducted an internal investigation into the FBI's processing of information known ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

A key piece of the House Select Committee investigating the attack focused on the failures of law enforcement, finding multiple examples of agencies that were warned ahead of time that an attack was coming and did nothing to ensure added protection on Jan. 6.

“Law enforcement had a very direct role in contributing to the security failures that led to the violence," said Tim Heaphy, a former federal prosecutor and the Jan. 6 committee’s chief investigative counsel. His team documented a number of failures, but most of them were downplayed in the final public hearing.

"The ongoing FBI review of its actions during the weeks preceding Jan. 6, 2021, has not included an assessment of how it processed information. Assessing this process will help determine if the mistakes we identified are isolated or due to a systemic cause," the GAO report says. "Taking actions on deficiencies identified by its own assessment can help FBI further establish a control environment in which there is assurance that policies for processing information are followed to increase awareness of potential threats."

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Under the section titled "Recommendations for Executive Action," the report clarifies that there are 10 recommendations, including, "The director of the FBI should assess the extent to which and why personnel did not process information related to the events of Jan. 6 according to policy. The director of the FBI should, following its assessment, implement a plan to address any internal control deficiencies identified to ensure personnel consistently follow policies for processing information."

Addressing the report, former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann said, "This is really unacceptable and it is on Garland and Wray."

Former special counsel for the Depart of Defense, Ryan Goodman, posted the excerpts on Twitter demanding a new FBI director, ideally one "who'll conduct a true review of FBI's Jan. 6 intelligence failures."

Speaking on a Just Security podcast in Nov. 2022, former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa and former deputy director and acting director Andrew McCabe highlighted that at the first part of the investigations around the attack, the FBI lied about having advanced warning an attack was coming. In fact, as late as June 2021, Wray still claimed that the FBI didn't have intelligence about Jan. 6 while testifying to Congress.

Rangappa compared it to the failures on Sept. 11, 2001, when intelligence failures were discovered because the information wasn't being shared and the dots weren't being connected. That wasn't the case on Jan. 6. As early as Nov. 2020, an informant in the Oath Keepers sent the FBI a recording with concerns about the group going to war against the U.S. Government.

McCabe said that it raises "serious concerns about how the FBI was doing its job" ahead of Jan. 6. If it was true that the FBI didn't have the intelligence, McCabe said that there would be a larger question of why because it's what the bureau is supposed to do. He explained that what is known now is that "there were many such reports."