The FBI conducted a tabletop exercise in summer 2020 that imagined what sort of violence might ensue in a contested presidential election that year, devising strategies like undercover informants and mass prosecutions for minor crimes that it would later use with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, documents obtained by Just the News show.

FBI Director Kash Patel turned over the long-secret memos to Congress last week, providing fresh evidence that federal law enforcement was acutely concerned for months ahead of time about the potential for violence in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

The memos show the bureau's Boston office led the tabletop exercise and culled open-source intelligence on the potential for violence from both left-leaning anarchists to right-leaning extremists.

“The FBI assesses domestic violent extremist (DVE) threats related to the 2020 elections likely will increase as the election approaches, despite the current focus of many DVEs on the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest,” an August 2020 memo concluded. "'Election-related threats' include but are not limited to those against candidates, campaign events, presidential conventions, party offices, elected officials, voter registration events, and threats or plots related to electoral outcomes," the memo added.

The memos also warned that foreign enemies like Iran and China were likely to foment domestic violence on U.S. soil.

Many left-leaning advocacy groups insisted, with the assistance of legacy media, that the concept of foreign election interference should be dismissed as mere "conspiracy theories" and disregarded, but the memos show the FBI considered it a real possibility.

"As of 15 July 2020, the Governments of the People's Republic of China, Iran, and especially Russia appear to have broadly encouraged illegal activity and violence in the hypothetical event that 2020 Presidential election results are disputed, especially via the use of opportunistic, social media-enabled influence operations," one memo said, citing information from the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

"China and Iran were motivated to interfere with US elections and civil stability by an interest in undermining US democratic processes," it added.

You can read the memos here.

The long-secret memos memorializing the exercise were briefly referenced by former FBI Director Christopher Wray in June 2021 testimony before Congress in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot, but were only turned over for the first time after a request last year from Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., the chairman of the House Judiciary's Select Subcommittee on January 6. 

J6 riot could have been avoided

Loudermilk said the memos show the FBI had far more concerns about a disputed election and violence than it acknowledged during the Biden years and yet failed to adequately alert the U.S. Capitol ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 tragedy.

"This document is evidence that Wray’s FBI predicted, as early as September 2020, that an attack on the Capitol was possible," he said. "It also suggests that the FBI infiltrate online chat forums and build a network of Confidential Human Sources (CHS) prior to January 6. It further outlines how the FBI should pursue heavy-handed prosecutions for minor offenses, which Biden’s DOJ carried out quite effectively after the attack."

"We now know, through CHS reports and other intelligence, that the FBI had enough information to not only predict an attack on the Capitol, but to prepare for one," he added. "So why did the FBI not take steps to protect the U.S. Capitol?"

The memo shared a threat assessment exercise conducted by the FBI’s Boston Field Office about the possible threats such violent extremists may play in the case of a disputed election, warning that the growing prevalence of threats towards elected officials in particular, made that outcome more likely.

Of particular concern to the Boston office was the possibility that a contentious election dispute may prime certain violent groups to prepare for future violence, which could be set off by “the next major social upheaval or event.” 

To combat this, the FBI office recommended developing a “robust source base” that would be “embedded” with possibly violent groups in order to provide “early detection and disruption of planning for future events.” 

The office also envisioned a strong law enforcement response to even "minimal criminal activity” as a way to deter any group’s plans for future violent action.  

“A strong and effective law enforcement response to even minimal criminal activity, along with community messaging that violence will not be tolerated, may dissuade those looking to take the next step to violent action,” the field office concluded. 

Biden's agencies used J6 as platform to increase spying and actions against U.S. citizens

These tactics were employed six months later during and in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. After repeatedly refusing to elaborate to Congress how many FBI informants were present in the crowd that day, after-action complaints from FBI agents showed about two dozen informants were embedded in the crowd and that more than 250 agents were deployed to deal with the crowds, Just the News previously reported. 

The thousands of Jan. 6-related prosecutions pursued by the federal government in the aftermath of the riot, with some offenses only amounting to misdemeanor trespassing, were later used by the FBI to inflate the Domestic Violent Extremism threat metrics, used to justify a sweeping expansion of federal law enforcement–later catching up traditional Catholics and parents speaking at school board meetings. 

The Biden White House released its “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” in June 2021, echoing the conclusions of the earlier August 2020 report, but with the Jan. 6 riot in hindsight. 

“The Intelligence Community (IC) assesses that domestic violent extremists (DVEs) who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021,” the Biden-era domestic terrorism document argued, citing the Capitol riot as an example. 

The document never disclosed, however, the key difference between the Capitol riot and other domestic terrorist attacks. Unlike the perpetrators in the previous deadly domestic terrorist attacks, the January 6 rioters did not kill a single person, Just the News previously reported.