US Officials Spread Conspiracy Theory About Antifa Involvement In US Capitol Riots

US media is report­ing that at least one US Con­gress­man and the Attor­ney Gen­er­al of Texas were pro­mot­ing the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that sup­port­ers of the so-called Antifa (anti-fas­cist) move­ment were involved in the recent vio­lent demon­stra­tions at the US capi­tol build­ing. Accord­ing to the New York Times report, the FBI has denied such involve­ment on the part of Antifa:

Jan­u­ary 8, 2020 The Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion said on Fri­day that there was no evi­dence that sup­port­ers of the antifa move­ment — a loose col­lec­tive of antifas­cist activists — had par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro-Trump mob that breached the Capi­tol build­ing on Wednes­day. Steven D’Antuono, an assis­tant direc­tor at the agency, said in a call with reporters that there was “no indi­ca­tion” of the group’s involve­ment among the riot­ers who stormed the Capi­tol. Since Wednes­day, far-right activists and allies of the pres­i­dent have made the claim, often while pre­sent­ing eas­i­ly dis­proved evi­dence, that the riot­ers were made up of antifa sup­port­ers, not back­ers of Pres­i­dent Trump. Among those push­ing the false­hood were Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Gaetz, a Flori­da Repub­li­can, who said while object­ing to the elec­toral votes for Mr. Biden that peo­ple in the mob were “in fact mem­bers of the vio­lent ter­ror­ist group antifa.” Ken Pax­ton, the attor­ney gen­er­al of Texas, also said antifa was involved.

Read the rest here.

Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ing on dis­in­for­ma­tion efforts by US gov­ern­ment offi­cials has included;

• In Decem­ber, we report­ed on a speech by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, gen­er­al­ly described as con­tain­ing wild­ly inac­cu­rate claims about the US elections.

• In Decem­ber, we report­ed  that the head of the Repub­li­can Par­ty in the US state of Ari­zona had post­ed a dis­in­for­ma­tion video titled “Domin­ion Exposed” in which she said that the video “should ter­ri­fy every sin­gle American.”

• In Octo­ber, we  post­ed on an exten­sive report detail­ing what it described as the adop­tion by US Pres­i­dent Trump and his allies of infor­ma­tion war­fare tac­tics nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with author­i­tar­i­an regimes.

As not­ed in the GIOR FAQ:

The US is unique among demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries at this point in time because it is the only demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try that is known to have its own gov­ern­ment and/or a major polit­i­cal par­ty con­duct­ing influ­ence oper­a­tions direct­ed at its own cit­i­zens. This looks like­ly to con­tin­ue for the fore­see­able future.