Former FBI Agent: Secret Service has ‘Treasure Trove’ of Information on Rioters

One of the biggest questions that still remains after the storming of the US Capitol on Wednesday is how exactly the incident was allowed to occur, and why authorities in the area were so vastly underprepared for the event.

Capitol Police were overwhelmed by protesters, with crowds estimated to have been in the tens of thousands at one point.  A small number of these demonstrators, perhaps only a couple hundred or so, turned violent; smashing windows and doors in an attempt to occupy the building itself.  It took hours for any cavalry to come, and it took the urging of VP Mike Pence to get the DC National Guard to the scene.

Now the FBI is asking for the public to help them to identify those who committed the act, but one former agent is fairly sure that the Secret Service already has all that they need.

In an interview on America’s Newsroom on Thursday, former FBI Deputy Assistant Director Danny Coulson shared insight into the steps that will be taken to track down those who committed the egregious acts of violence on Capitol Hill Wednesday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is asking for any information that may help identify the pro-Trump protesters that participated in the violence as lawmakers were in the process of certifying the Electoral College votes won by Joe Biden.

“We know that this was instigator-generated. It didn’t just happen,” Coulson said. “There were people there that came to do it and generated it and caused this horrible mayhem.”

While it may seem next to impossible to find those that caused the mayhem, Coulson said that there are plenty of ways that justice will be served.

“First of all, cameras. There are cameras all over the place,”  he said. “Also, remember that those police officers that were attacked, they had body cameras on…FBI and Secret Service and other institutions have very good facial recognition ability and they captured all that stuff,” he added. “It all becomes digitized.”

And there was more…

“The FBI will see if other people were involved in other riots. There is a possibility. There is a culture in this country, people go from riot to riot,” he said. “They will have the cell phones of the people that got arrested. That’s going to be a treasure trove of information.”

There is a pervasive theory circulating among some conspiracists that there were elements of Antifa and other far-left groups working to encourage the violence from inside the pro-Trump crowd.  Should the Secret Service truly have the evidence that Coulson says they have, the truth will likely be available within the week.