A leading counterterrorism official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed on Wednesday that, despite frequent and baseless claims that the protests at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th was supposedly an “armed insurrection,” no firearms were recovered in the aftermath of the protests, as reported by the Epoch Times.
Jill Sanborn, the FBI’s counterrorism chief, confirmed this significant detail during sworn testimony before the Senate. When asked by Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) how many firearms were confiscated from the protesters who were arrested, Sanborn said “to my knowledge, none.” Sanborn then went on to claim, without evidence, that “we knew they would be armed, we had intelligence that they would be coming to D.C., but we did not have intelligence that they would be breaching the Capitol.”
Johnson, along with other Republican critics of the investigation, has correctly pointed out that the protests could not be described as an “armed insurrection,” as many Democrats have called it, due to the fact that no guns were present on that day.
“If it’s properly termed an ‘armed insurrection,’” Johnson said in an interview last week, “it was a pretty ragtag one. If that was a planned armed insurrection, you really have a bunch of idiots.”
But despite the evidence, others in the intelligence community are insisting that the mostly peaceful protests on January 6th be classified as “domestic terrorism” nonetheless. FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed during his own testimony that the agency is, in fact, formally labeling the incident as such.
The protests saw supporters of President Trump, angry over the widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, peacefully enter the United States Capitol during Congress’ tabulation of the electoral college results. The only violence came from Capitol Police, when one officer shot and killed an unarmed protester and 14-year Air Force veteran, Ashli Babbitt, without displaying proper protocol for the use of deadly force such as firing a warning shot. Several other protesters, mostly older individuals, died that day due to sudden medical incidents that were unrelated to the protests. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died of a stroke after the protests, with the media widely and falsely reporting that he was beaten to death by protestors.