asking about was deeply dist disturbing. we had an individual wearing a tactic call vest and gun and nail gun who tried to attack the cincinnati field office. a subsequent review of the subject s devices and online postings identified a pretty striking anti-f.b.i., anti-federal law enforcement hostility. he was calling on others to kill federal law enforcement claiming he felt he was fighting in his words a civil war. it is unfortunately part of a broader phenomenon that we have seen not just against the f.b.i. this is important to add, but against law enforcement all across the country. not just against law enforcement professionals themselves, which is appalling enough, but calling for attacks against their families, which is truly despicable. that man was captured and eliminated, was he not? yes. a few days later was the arizona f.b.i. department subject of armed violence armed protestors? well, i know that our phoenix field office has had a number of very concer
yeah. so are you acknowledging, then, there were undercover agents? as i sit here now i don t believe there were undercover agents, there were f.b.i. agents. did you have any assets present that day in the crowd? when it comes to what you are calling assets or what we would call confidential human sources that s a place where i want to be careful, much always i said in response to an earlier question, there are court filings that i think speak to this that i m happy to make sure we get to you assuming they aren t under seal. and that can better answer the questions than i can as i sit here right now. in the same june 2021 committee hearing you told us the fisa court quote, approved f.b.i. procedures, minimization procedures and collection and did not find misconduct. that s what you said. specifically you said the fisk
have. and one member tweeted quote, let s defund and dismantle the f.b.i., end quote. another told fox news that quote, republicans should defund the bureaucracy, end quote. a third told the press he thinks the f.b.i. needs to be split up and moved out into pieces, end quote. those are direct quotes and only a small sample of what s out there. can you briefly describe for us what the effect would be on our national security and on our domestic tranquility if the f.b.i. were to be defunded or dismantled? certainly it would be disastrous for 38,000 hard working career law enforcement professionals and their families. more importantly in many ways it would hurt our great state and local law enforcement officers who depend on us every day to work with them on a whole slough of challenging threats.
when it came to the foot soldiers who broke into the capitol and assaulted police officers that day. what i can tell from the public record, the activities of the president himself, some of which were a matter of public record such as his tape recorded conversation with the secretary of state in georgia which he badgered the secretary to quote, find 11,780 votes that don t exist. it was the subject of an investigation by the local district attorney was not the subject of investigation for more than a year by the justice department. to me, that is unexplainable. it was never the kind of case in which you could roll up the foot soldiers on the higher ups because there were multiple lines of effort in trying to overturn the election. the appointment of the special counsel accelerated the