The Daily Populous Monday October 13rd, 2025 night edition
Authored by usatoday.com and submitted by duderos

Donald Trump falsely says 'Biden FBI' placed agents in Jan. 6 crowds

Show Caption Hide Caption YouTube pays $24.5M to Trump over account ban lawsuit YouTube pays $24.5M to settle lawsuit after suspending Trump’s account post-Jan. 6 riots.

President Donald Trump on Oct. 12 repeated false claims about the deadly Jan. 6 attack, suggesting in a social media post that former President Joe Biden placed FBI agents within the crowd.

The Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, when a violent mob swarmed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop the peaceful transfer of power after Biden won the 2020 presidential race, occurred while Trump was still in office. The election was certified the next day, and Biden became president on Jan. 20, 2021.

More: How has the Insurrection Act been used? Battling secession, segregation and riots.

"THE BIDEN FBI PLACED 274 AGENTS INTO THE CROWD ON JANUARY 6," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social overnight. "If this is so, which it is, a lot of very good people will be owed big apologies. What a SCAM - DO SOMETHING!!!"

The post follows a similar claim he made on social media in late September. It also echoes years-long conspiracy theories that say the attack was directed by the government, despite multiple reports and investigations debunking the allegations.

A Justice Department inspector general report released December 2024 didn't find any evidence that the FBI had undercover employees in the protest crowds at the Capitol.

The report concluded there were 26 FBI confidential sources − not employees of the agency − who independently attended Jan. 6 events in DC. Of those, the agency tasked three with reporting on possible domestic terrorists on Jan. 6, the report said, and four FBI sources entered the U.S. Capitol that day without authorization from the agency.

The 274 agents Trump mentioned in his post appear to refer to the 274 agents the FBI said it sent to respond to the developing crisis at the Capitol, dispatched after the riots began.

Trump-appointed FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X Sep. 27 that "274 FBI agents were thrown into crowd control" on Jan. 6, contradicting the president's claims, though he criticized the move as "against FBI standards."

The riot led to several deaths, including a demonstrator who was shot as she tried to reach fleeing lawmakers. A Capitol police officer died of strokes the day after the attack, and four others have taken their own lives since then. More than 150 officers were injured, many permanently.

By the end of 2024, more than 1,400 people had been arrested and more than 1,000 people sentenced for crimes in relation to Jan. 6. Once Trump took office for his second term in January 2025, he commuted the sentences of 14 people convicted of crimes committed during the Jan. 6 attack, and he gave full pardons to more than 1,200 people who have been convicted in connection with the riots.

Kathryn Palmer is a politics reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her at kapalmer@usatoday.com and on X @KathrynPlmr.

saskdudley on October 12nd, 2025 at 17:20 UTC »

Yes, because Biden would want his inauguration to be interrupted by insurrection. The scary thing is there will always be someone that believes him, no matter how insane he sounds.

4ivE on October 12nd, 2025 at 17:18 UTC »

Two weeks before Biden was inaugurated.

King Piglet is demented or lying (spoiler: both).

nosynthshere on October 12nd, 2025 at 17:16 UTC »

Why did Trump pardon Biden’s FBI agents?