- - Kash Patel tries to correct MAGA conspiracy theories he once stoked — again

Analysis by Aaron Blake, CNNSeptember 30, 2025 at 2:46 AM

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FBI Director Kash Patel testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 17, 2025. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon - Annabelle Gordon/Reuters

For the second time this year, FBI Director Kash Patel has stepped forward to correct claims about a MAGA conspiracy theory he once played a key role in promoting.

For the second time this year, he could be fighting a losing battle.

Months ago, it was Patel’s sudden move to downplay the Jeffrey Epstein files. As a right-wing commentator, he had played up a massive supposed conspiracy that suggested the government was hiding others who were involved in Epstein’s crimes, saying at one point, “Put on your big boy pants, and let us know who the pedophiles are.”

But in May, as FBI director, he suddenly said the evidence showed there was nothing explosive in the files, angering the MAGA movement.

We got something of a repeat this weekend after conservative media and President Donald Trump seized on leaked information that said 274 FBI agents were dispatched amid the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

They promptly butchered the information, though. They suggested it was evidence that the agents were “embedded” in the crowd beforehand – and even that the agents were the kinds of government provocateurs inciting rioters that MAGA has long baselessly theorized about.

Trump quickly cast it in the most scandalous terms.

“It was just revealed that the FBI had secretly placed … 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during, the January 6th Hoax,” Trump said on Truth Social on Saturday. He added that the agents were “probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists, but certainly not as ‘Law Enforcement Officials.’”

But the information said nothing of the sort. A document obtained by the right-wing site Just The News instead said the 274 agents included those who had “responded” to the riot at the Capitol and to nearby threats like pipe bombs. (CNN has not confirmed the veracity of the document and has previously reported that no undercover FBI agents were at the Capitol on January 6, according to a DOJ watchdog, but that 26 paid FBI informants were in Washington, DC, that day.)

And remarkably, Patel himself stepped forward to offer a corrective to the president. He emphasized that the agents were called in afterward.

“Agents were sent into a crowd control mission after the riot was declared by Metro Police …” Patel told Fox News Digital on Saturday.

He later promoted the story on X, again emphasizing these agents were responding to the attack – not being there “prior to” it.

He said that “274 FBI agents were thrown into crowd control on Jan 6.”

It was a pretty remarkable moment. Here was a president building up this document as proof of his long-running claims about a massive government false flag. He was joined by many of the most conspiratorial voices in the MAGA movement.

But almost immediately, his own appointed FBI director – a loyalist if there ever was one – stepped forward and completely undermined it.

Patel made a point to argue that there was still something amiss with the FBI sending agents to respond to the attack. (He repeatedly said that went against FBI “standards.”) But the real point is that he was saying, contra Trump and others, that these agents were not “secretly placed” in the crowds beforehand to act as agitators.

And it’s all the more remarkable given Patel’s own history with this particular conspiracy theory.

In his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters,” Patel claimed there were “strange agitators” at the Capitol on January 6. He said they had “stirred up the crowd to breach the Capitol beforehand.” He cited “instigators being ignored by the FBI.”

“All the signs of a cover-up are on full display …” Patel said.

He went even further on his podcast in November 2022, claiming the FBI had been “planning Jan. 6 for a year.” In September of that year, he suggested the FBI had entrapped rioters and that the FBI targeted January 6 “because they wanted a political target, a political prosecution, not one based on law and fact.”

Patel often focused on the theory that the FBI planted confidential human sources in the crowd rather than FBI agents. But at one point, he took issue with an FBI official who didn’t directly respond when asked if federal agents were involved with January 6.

“If the answer was no, she would have said so,” Patel said.

(In fact, the witness said she resisted answering in order not to divulge FBI “sources and methods.”)

As with the Epstein files, it’s extremely telling that a man so steeped in these conspiracy theories would see fit to correct them when he’s actually got the evidence at his fingertips. These theories are often built on innuendo, speculation and misinformation. And here is a case in point.

But as with the Epstein files, it’s clear even Patel can only do so much.

Despite the FBI director’s corrective on Saturday night, some MAGA voices have gone right along claiming the new evidence is a bombshell.

Appearing on CNN on Sunday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson still spoke as if FBI could have been involved in spurring the attack.

“Apparently, there were 274 FBI agents in the crowd on January 6,” the Louisiana Republican said.

Even as CNN’s Jake Tapper noted that Patel had said the agents came after the riot started and said it wasn’t evidence of a “false flag,” Johnson was undeterred.

“How do you know that? There’s a lot of questions,” Johnson said, adding: “Did they spur on the crowd? Did they open the gates to allow them in? I don’t know. These are questions, but they should be answered.”

Prominent conservative leader Matt Schlapp went on Newsmax and cited “300 undercover FBI agents in the January 6 crowd.”

GOP Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri claimed Monday on X that the new evidence showed the “FBI had over 270 plainclothes agents embedded in the J6 crowd.”

And even Trump in an interview with NBC News on Sunday suggested there was still something amiss with the 274 agents.

“Don’t forget, we just found out about all of these FBI agents being there,” the president said.

He didn’t repeat his claim that the agents were there beforehand or that they might have instigated the riot. But Trump – who faced a second impeachment over his own role in January 6 — is clearly not done casting this as somehow suspicious.

If nothing else, Patel’s move to correct this misinformation will provide a counterpoint to anybody – including Trump – who brings this up in the future.

But the whole thing also shows how the conspiracy theories he once trafficked can be hard to kill.

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Source: “AOL Politics”