Embedded: The FBI Agents Inside January 6th

Summary

---

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Morning Wire
Episode: Embedded: The FBI Agents Inside January 6th
Date: October 5, 2025
Host: John Bickley (Daily Wire Executive Editor), Georgia Howe
Guest: Steve Baker (Investigative Journalist, The Blaze)

---

Episode Overview

This episode delves into the recent revelations about the presence and role of FBI agents at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Investigative journalist Steve Baker joins host John Bickley to analyze the implications of the FBI's admission that hundreds of agents were deployed or directed to the Capitol that day, how this news shapes public perception of the Bureau, and what future reforms might look like.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The FBI's Admission: "Hundreds" of Agents Present

• Revelation: The FBI has now confirmed that 274 agents were sent or told to respond to the Capitol on January 6.

• Distinctions: Baker emphasizes the difference between “plainclothes” officers (who might still display FBI insignia in certain situations) and genuinely undercover agents.

• Deployment Details: According to Baker, these agents were mostly off-duty and were only called in almost two hours after violence began. Their orders were inconsistent—some told to deploy, others told to wait.

  “The second thing is these are not the 274 that everybody wants to say were already embedded in the crowd and acting as agents provocateur... These were people that were at home, they were off duty, they were on leave... that call didn’t go out to them until almost two hours after the violence actually began.”
  — Steve Baker (02:45)

2. Mischaracterization of the FBI’s Role

• Host's Challenge: Bickley asks whether the FBI Director (Kash Patel) is misunderstanding the role of these agents or if Baker’s view is missing some detail.

• Baker's Response: The agents were ordered to assist with crowd control—a task Baker claims they are not trained for and did not actually perform.

  “They did receive email saying, you're going out to do crowd control, which, by the way, is not something they do... What they did not do was crowd control.”
  — Steve Baker (06:43)

3. Delayed Transparency from the FBI

• Timing of Admission: It took over four years for the FBI to disclose these additional agents and the presence of 26 confidential human sources (CHS).

• Reason for Delay: Baker points to the FBI’s standard response—refusing to comment on ongoing investigations—and suggests possible stonewalling to protect leadership.

  “Chris Wray has his default get out of jail free card, which is, I’m sorry, we can’t comment on an ongoing investigation... It took them four years to tell us about the 26 confidential human sources... but as of right now, there is no actual evidence that any FBI agent acted as a provocateur.”
  — Steve Baker (08:15)

4. Media Narratives and J6 Coverage

• Mainstream Media Bias: Baker alleges that mainstream media (MSM) has ignored inconvenient facts, sticking closely to a narrative “established and preserved” by Nancy Pelosi and the January 6 committee.

• Key Quote:

  “Nancy Pelosi directed them on the first anniversary of January 6th... she said, ‘we are going to establish and preserve the narrative of that day.’ And that’s what the point of that first select committee was to do.”
  — Steve Baker (09:30)

• Perjury in Oath Keepers Trial: Baker details a finding where a special agent allegedly perjured himself during the trial by providing a timeline of events contradicted by security footage.

5. Needed Reforms and the Future of the Bureau

• Essential Institution, Flawed Execution: Baker acknowledges the necessity of a federal investigative body, but states the current FBI is too entangled with policing powers.

• Call for Structural Reform: He references former Director Kash Patel’s vow to reform the Bureau, even suggesting it be “busted up” to rid it of deep-rooted problems.

  “We don’t need a federal police force carrying guns, doing SWAT raids on misdemeanor defendants. And really and truly, the only way that we’re ever going to get the FBI right again is to bust it up.”
  — Steve Baker (11:58)

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On confusion and orders:

  “We don’t know exactly what the timeline was where the call went out… There’s a lot of confusion. Then we get into the situation about crowd control. The FBI is not trained for crowd control.”
  (03:30) — Steve Baker

• On their firsthand investigation:

  “Myself and Joe Hanneman... have had more access to Capitol CCTV... than any other journalist. Our first reaction when we saw this tweet from Patel saying that they were out there doing crowd control... we erupted in our private DMs, ‘This is not true.’”
  (06:00) — Steve Baker

• On unaddressed truths:

  “I think the most important work that I did since January 6th was the revelation that in the first Oath Keepers trial, two federal officers perjured themselves. In that trial, we have the proof.”
  (10:30) — Steve Baker

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:42 — New FBI admission: 274 agents sent to Capitol on J6
• 02:00–04:00 — Discussion of what “plainclothes” really meant; timing and deployment of agents
• 05:13 — Did all 274 respond? Disputes about agents’ real on-the-ground roles
• 06:43–07:09 — Were agents ordered to do crowd control? Did they comply?
• 07:53 — Why did it take over four years for the FBI to reveal these facts?
• 09:30–11:30 — MSM handling of J6 narrative; alleged perjury in Oath Keepers trial
• 11:58–12:46 — What needs to happen to restore trust in the FBI?

---

Conclusion

Steve Baker offers a skeptical, investigative assessment of the FBI’s role on January 6 and of the narratives perpetuated by the media and some federal authorities. He calls for greater transparency, accountability, and considerable reform in how the FBI operates and interacts with the public. The discussion moves beyond simple reporting on the recent FBI admissions, highlighting the ongoing controversy and questions over the events of January 6, the role of government agents, and the integrity of law enforcement and media institutions.

---

Transcript

[Steve Baker]

The FBI is back under the national spotlight after recent admissions about the presence of hundreds of agents deployed to the Capitol on January 6. The scrutiny comes as Director Kash Patel seeks to reform the bureau and regain the confidence of the American people.

[John Bickley]

In this episode, we sit down with investigative journalist Steve Baker to discuss what new details have come to light about the FBI's actions during J6 and how the Bureau can earn back the public's trust. I'm Daily Wire Executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.

[Commercial Narrator]

By the time the average person reaches 60, they've likely cycled through numerous fad diets, collectively losing and regaining several hundred pounds over the years. All that yo yo dieting increases your risk of diabetes, liver problems and heart issues. The truth is, most of us need more than willpower to break free from this pattern. That's where Lean comes in. Unlike those expensive GLP1 injections, Lean is a non prescription supplement created by doctors specifically for this problem. And the science behind it is rock solid. Lean tackles weight loss three ways that actually help you keep it off. It keeps your blood sugar steady. No more energy crashes sending you into a snack cabinet. It controls cravings and that constant hunger feeling. And it helps your body convert fat into energy instead of storing it. I say it all the time. I was skeptical, but I tried it anyway. And before I knew it, I was down a pant size and I was going to the Daily Wire kitchen way less. If you want to lose meaningful weight at a healthy pace and keep it off, add lean to your diet and exercise lifestyle. Get 20% off when you enter code morning wire@take lean.com that's code [e-mail] today.

[John Bickley]

Steve, thanks for coming on.

[Steve Baker]

Hey, thanks so much for having me. Good to see you again.

[John Bickley]

Look, you too. We've recently had what many consider a bombshell admission from the FBI that not only did they have plainclothes officers in the crowd at the Capitol on January 6th, but they had hundreds of them. 274 to be precise. First, how significant an admission is this?

[Steve Baker]

The first thing that must be really explained is that is it really plain clothes officers there? This is a very important distinction about what was actually on the ground and what was deployed there. Technically is such a thing as a plainclothes FBI officer, but a plainclothes FBI officer would only be in truly plain, unidentifiable attire if they were either there as counter surveillance, actually doing the job of serving and protecting, making sure nobody's hiding a bomb in the crowd or, you know, doing anything otherwise nefarious, or they're actually undercover, which is a completely different distinction altogether. That's an actual operation. When they're on an undercover operation. These agents though, are operating in a new day. It's no longer J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. We don't have that FBI anymore. There's no national dress code standard any longer. So when they come up to your door and do a non and talk or something like that, they could be wearing flannel shirt, T shirt, jeans, khakis, whatever. But they always either have their badge on a lanyard or they met. They might have a logo on their shirt or they might have a jacket with it on. But when they are called specifically to a crowd control scenario, they will at the very least go put on their tactical vest, like a ballistic vest, which will have the FBI logo on it. They wear their badges, you know, maybe a ball cap with FBI on the ball cap. They're clearly identified even though they're plain clothes. The second thing is these are not the 274 that everybody wants to say were already embedded in the crowd and acting as agents provocateur and inflaming the passions of the MAGA crowd to go and storm the Capitol. These were people that were at home, they were off duty, they were on leave. Maybe they were in the various offices around washing D.C. and in the Capital District, but they were called in and that call didn't go out to them until, you know, almost two hours after the violence actually began. The President was still on the stage at the Ellipse when that famous Ray Epps barricade breach happened. And then the violence escalated from there. And so with those facts in play, we don't know exactly what the timeline was where the call went out. And it was actually emails were sent out to the agent saying, you need to go. Some of them were saying deploy. Some of were saying self deploy. Some were saying, no, don't self deploy. Wait on your group commander, wait to wait for your supervisor to tell you what to do. There's a lot of confusion. Then we get into the situation about crowd control. The FBI is not trained for crowd control.

[John Bickley]

There's a lot to unpack here and there's a lot of questions still to be answered. Like you said, timeline not exactly clear. The 274, let me start here. The 274 that they confirmed were on the grounds, you know, somewhere around the Capitol. Is that the number that were actually called into action or the ones that Actually made it there, arrived there. Like you said, there was conflicting orders at times. Were they all actually on the ground?

[Steve Baker]

I actually have video from my own camera of some of those 274 arriving after 6pm that night, after the National Guard had already been deployed. They were arriving in various stages. It wasn't just like, oh, oh, gosh, we got the call, and they were there to assist. First of all, they never stood the line with the Capitol Police and the Metro Police. They never protected the building. And even if they were 100% plainclothes, the first thing that they would do would go up to the line and they would identify themselves to law enforcement and then turn around and assist them. It never happened all day. Myself and Joe Hanneman, my partner in crime at the Blaze, who writes these stories together, we've done more work on January 6th than just about anybody. But the one thing I can tell you that we have done more of than anybody else on the planet, and Joe and I have had more access to Capital cctv, the actual viewing room there that the Congressional committee allows access to, than any other journalist. And our first reaction when we saw this tweet from Patel saying that they were out there doing crowd control. So now we erupted in our private DMs. We're like, this is not true. Because if we had seen them at any one point during that day, we would have made note of it. It just never happened.

[John Bickley]

So what is going on there? You know, this is a pretty serious accusation. You're leveling it, FBI Director Patel, that he's mischaracterizing what they were there to do. What do you think's going on there? Does he misunderstand what happened? Is it possible that you're wrong?

[Steve Baker]

The first thing is, is that, yes, according to the After Action Report, they were. And the Testimonies of those 274 agents, they did receive email saying, you're going out to do crowd control, which, by the way, is not something they do. It's not something they're even trained for. Right. So they were ordered to go out and do crowd control that day. What they did not do was crowd control.

[John Bickley]

Right. So that was the directive. But they did not carry through.

[Steve Baker]

They did not carry it out.

[John Bickley]

And they're not trained to do that, as you say.

[Steve Baker]

Right. And any control that they ostensibly or may have done would have been later after the tactical squads, including tactical units from the FBI, because they were in the building early. And that was the first time we saw FBI in the building at all. It was their tactical squad. Then we saw the SWAT team helping escort Congress members out of the building. We've seen video of that escorting them into the tunnels. But we don't see these plain clothes FBI agents ever assisting Metro Police or any of the other Capitol Police or any of the other uniformed law enforcement that did respond.

[John Bickley]

It took over four years to get this admission that there were an additional 274 FBI agents directed to the Capitol. Why was that admissions so slow in coming? If this is not a big deal, why wasn't that said up front? And do we have something like a perjury situation maybe with somebody like a Chris Wray because of this?

[Steve Baker]

Yeah, Chris. Chris Wray has his default get out of jail free card, which is, I'm sorry, we can't comment on an ongoing investigation. You know, that's, that's what the FBI typically does and always defaults to that when they don't want to answer a question. And as it relates to this, he was really pressured, under great detail and focus, to talk about the assets they had on the ground that day. And he wouldn't reveal the CHS, the, you know, the 26 confidential human sources. Wouldn't talk about that. He wouldn't talk about any other deployment. But there's, but it's. To your point, what, what took them 60 months or 52 months or whatever it was for them to finally tell us about these 274. And it took them four years to tell us about the 26 confidential human sources. But as of right now, there is no actual evidence that any FBI agent acted as a provocateur. Do I still believe that there were agitators, provocateurs, paid influencers over that crowd that day? 100%.

[John Bickley]

Are there any important elements of J6 that you feel are still being ignored by the media? What do you think are some of the biggest issues that are not actually being exposed?

[Steve Baker]

Well, if we're talking about being ignored, ignored by the media, we have to decide whether we're talking about friendly right wing media or are we talking about the opposition msm. Everything's being ignored by the msm. They have a narrative. Nancy Pelosi directed them on the first anniversary of January 6th. And this is an exact quote. She said, we are going to establish and preserve the narrative of that day. And that's what the point of that first select committee was to do, was to establish and preserve the preferred narrative of that day. And they have stuck to that. Now, what has happened though, is as so many truths have been revealed and so many of their own lies have now come under scrutiny and they've been caught. That literally over that four year period before Biden slept, you know, got out of town, he signed preemptive pardons for the members of that committee, including people that testified before that committee under oath. I think the most important work that I did since January 6th was the rebel revelation that in the first Oath Keepers trial, two federal officers perjured themselves. In that trial, we have the proof. I mean, we caught a special agent, ironically, again, the lead team member of the Nancy Pelosi's security detail. He lied in that trial and said that he witnessed another officer, Officer Harry Dunn, having an antagonistic encounter with four Oath Keepers just outside of Nancy Pelosi's office. The problem with that is that he was in another building at that time. That special agent was escorting senators into the Senate buildings a quarter of a mile away, under and through the tunnels. And, you know, it's like, it's one of those things you, you know, your gut instinct when you're watching a trial and you're watching a testimony and you're watching these two guys with this coordinated story, and something doesn't feel right. So when I got access, I went straight to that. And we found Special Agent David Lazarus, Nancy Pelosi's lead of her security detail. We found him in another building at a time where he claimed he witnesses witness the four Oath Keepers.

[John Bickley]

The final question, where does the Bureau go from here? What do you hope to see in the, in the coming months and years in terms of some reforms, some, some moves toward better transparency, etc.

[Steve Baker]

Well, I'll be perfectly honest with you. The federal government needs a Federal Bureau of Investigation. Nobody has better resourcing, nobody has better funding than the federal government to assist law enforcement all over the country and indeed around the world. But we don't need a federal police force carrying guns, doing SWAT raids on misdemeanor defendants. And really and truly, the only way that we're ever going to get the FBI right again is to bust it up. And, and that's, that's going to take a lot of courage. It's exactly what Cash Purcell said he was going to do. He wrote a book about it, Government Gangsters. He said he was going to turn the Hoover Building into a museum of the deep state, but he's not exactly doing any of that.

[John Bickley]

We'll see what, what transpires over the next few months and years. Thank you so much for joining us.

[Steve Baker]

Thank you.

[John Bickley]

That was Steve Baker, investigative journalist at the Blaze and this has been a weekend edition of MORNING W.

[Steve Baker]

Now is your time to get into a new Dr. Horton home by taking advantage of its national red tag sales event going on right now through October 19th. Stop by any of its participating communities and find select red tag homes at Incredible Pricing. So whether you're buying your first home or looking for an upgrade, you don't want to miss the red tag sales event going on right now. Discover the Dr. Horton Difference at Dr. Horton.com Dr. Horton America's Builder and Equal housing opportunity builder.