Responding to a subpoena from U.S. House Republicans, FBI Director Kash Patel has ordered the release of “hundreds” of documents related to the agency’s J6 activities and the timely discovery of pipe bombs outside Democratic and Republican Washington, D.C. headquarters that month.
Marshall Yates, the FBI assistant director, responded in a March 7th letter to lawmakers seeking information about the pipe bombs investigation, writing that the disclosure is a “sign of good faith” about efforts to elucidate FBI activities for the public.
“As a sign of good faith, we are providing this initial production more than a week ahead of the Committee’s subpoena deadline,” Yates wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Epoch Times. “But this will not be the last production we will send to satisfactorily comply with the Committee’s subpoena. To that end, we are diligently working to completely comply with your subpoenas.”
The initial batch of documents constitutes an initial response to the “diverse and broad subject matters” asked about by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (D-OH), Yates said, adding more information would be forthcoming with “minimal redactions.”
Immediately after Patel was sworn in, Rep. Jordan volleyed a letter to the FBI demanding information on the pipe bomb investigation. He had previously accused director Christopher Wray of “slow-walking” the probe and criticized the Bureau’s use of “confidential human sources” present during the January 6th, 2021, riots at the Capitol.
Patel’s confirmation is expected to shed an authoritative light on the FBI’s J6 activities. Prominent Republicans, including Jordan and others, have suggested that FBI agents were in the motley crowds when unrest fomented, leading to the deaths of several participants, followed by subsequent deaths of several officers in medical episodes.
A report by the U.S. inspector general later confirmed that the FBI had placed dozens of informants in the crowd, though no instance of an agent being present has yet surfaced.
Republicans are also seeking explanations for FBI activities around the visitation of school board meetings following a controversial 2021 memo by former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which he suggested that parental rights groups posed a threat to public teachers and administrators. Information has also been requested by Jordan about a memo from the Bureau’s Richmond office, which described Catholics who attend traditional Latin Mass as “violent extremists.”
Wray, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017 only to later lose the GOP’s confidence while in office, announced in December that he planned to step down and allow President Trump to appoint his successor. Despite the FBI director position traditionally carrying a 10-year tenure, Wray admitted Trump “had made it clear that he intended to make a change.”
Prior to his appointment, Patel, a former national security advisor to Trump, had been among the most vocal supporters of bringing transparency to the FBI. Last week, he was at the forefront of a document dump containing the FBI’s last remnants of previously unreleased information about its investigation into notorious late pedophile philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein.
