FBI Director Chris Wray said Thursday that the agency is tracking a “wide range of online chats.” This includes calls for armed protests before the president-elect Joe Biden inauguration on January 20th.
He said possible rallies and protests in state capitals across the country could attract gunmen near government officials and buildings.
“We’re looking at people who can try to repeat the same kind of violence we saw last week,” Wray said in his first public statements since pro-Trump riots stormed the United States Capitol.
According to Wray, the FBI has identified more than 200 suspects since the Jan. 6 attack. He warned, “If you’re there, an FBI agent will come looking for you.”
Every time details about suspects come to light.
Some of them have been identified as current or former police or military.
One is a retired Air Force officer, who was arrested in Texas last weekend after allegedly being seen in a viral photo with plastic handcuffs in the Senate chamber. A prosecutor said Thursday he carried them because he intended to “take hostages.”
“It means taking hostages. It means kidnapping, containing, perhaps attempting, perhaps executing members of the U.S. government,” Deputy Attorney General Jay Weimer said of retired Lieutenant Colonel Larry Rendall Brock Jr.
A law enforcement official told CBS News that a Washington DC police officer saw riot police using military-style hand signals to communicate inside the Capitol building during the ‘assault. Identifying people using small-unit military tactics is one of the “top priorities” for a sedition working group led by the DCUS prosecutor’s office Catherine Herridge of CBS News reported.
Federal authorities have charged more than 40 people in connection with the riot.
Photo of Ting Shen / Xinhua via Getty
Collaborator: The Associated Press