USCP admits under oath that agitators were embedded in the Jan. 6 crowd to "coordinate to remove barriers, overwhelm police, and attack police." Provocateurs infiltrated the crowd that marched on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) official testified this week during a criminal trial in a federal court in Washington D.C.
Bradford Geyer, one of the lawyers representing defendant Richard Barnett, the man who famously put his boots on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D) desk that day, asked Capt. Carneysha Mendoza about the presence of agent provocateurs.
“Isn’t it true that you had a lot of people, a large quantity of people walking down two streets that dead-ended at the Capitol?” Geyer asked Capt. Mendoza on Wednesday.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“Okay. And would it be fair to say that at least at some of the leading edges of that crowd, they contained bad people or provocateurs; is that fair?” Geyer asked.
“It’s fair,” Mendoza said.
Mendoza also agreed with Geyer’s characterization that the provocateurs were “highly trained” and “violent.”
“Highly trained, violent people who work and coordinate together?” Geyer asked.
“Yes,” Mendoza replied.
“Highly trained violent people who work and coordinate to remove barriers, overwhelm police, and attack police?” Geyer asked.
“Are you talking about did they do that during the event?” Mendoza wondered.
“Yes,” Geyer said.
“They did,” Mendoza said.
Mendoza, a 20-year veteran of the USCP, who oversees approximately 300 full-time officers, also confirmed that authorities received intelligence that certain groups were planning to embed themselves into the Jan. 6 demonstration to agitate the crowd.
“That’s typical for any protest that we do. I’ve been doing protests for 20 years, and that’s typical of any protest. There’s usually a group and a counter-group or a group and several counter-groups. So that’s typical, yes,” she said.
Barnett, on trial for eight charges related to the Capitol breach, pleaded not guilty in 2022 and rejected a plea offer.
From the Washington Examiner:
He faces eight federal charges, including taking a stun gun into the Capitol, theft of government property, and obstructing Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote count. He initially had seven charges against him, but prosecutors on Dec. 21 added the eighth charge of civil disorder. Barnett could be sentenced to a year behind bars if found guilty. His lawyers unsuccessfully attempted to get two of the charges dropped.
Barnett, who goes by the nickname Bigo, has openly bragged about writing Pelosi “a nasty note” and putting “my feet up on her desk.” The note read, “Nancy, Bigo was here, b****,” prosecutors alleged. Before he left her office, Barnett grabbed letterhead and waved it around but insisted later he did not steal it because he “put a quarter on her desk.”
Mendoza’s remarks are a stunning revelation given the stonewalling by the FBI and the Democrat-led House Committee on January 6.
FBI Director Christopher Wray in November 2022 refused to tell Congress whether FBI assets were embedded in the Jan. 6 crowd.
Likewise, in the Jan. 6 Committee’s 800-page report released in December, not one page mentioned the involvement of provocateur Ray Epps, who was the only person caught on camera on January 5th and 6th openly calling for demonstrators to breach the Capitol building.
Epps has not faced any charges despite admitting he “orchestrated” the breach on the Capitol.
This comes as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed to release 14,000 hours of previously withheld Jan. 6 footage.
“I think the American public should actually see all that happened instead of a report that’s written for a political basis,” he told reporters on Thursday.