FBI Entrapment Claims Abound Around Jan. 6, Busted Whitmer Plot

Recent news of the work of FBI agents and informants in spoiling domestic terror threats are raising widespread claims of corruption and entrapment, if not coercion, the New York Post reported.

"It appears to me that there are allegations, with evidentiary support, that the FBI may have or currently is infiltrating, inciting or spawning alleged fringe group operations in this country," attorney Darren Richie told the Post. "The citizens of this country deserve to know if any of the stories permeating this subject are valid."

Richie is representing ex-DEA special agent Mark Sami Ibrahim, who was arrested Tuesday for trespassing at the Capitol with a gun Jan. 6. Ibrahim claims he was helping a friend document the protest for the FBI.

Also, members of the Wolverine Watchmen who are accused of concocting the plot to kidnap Michigan Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer claim FBI informants were intimately involved not just in the plot, but the origination of it, according to reports.

"The FBI knew these people had some beliefs and were egging them on and providing help and ammunition," Kareem Johnson, a Black "left-wing attorney," according to the Post, said. "They encouraged, helped instigate and escalated the criminal conduct of those individuals. At the end of the day, there were almost as many FBI agents leading the group as the other people in the group."

The political leanings of the attorney are noteworthy, because the busted schemers are claiming they were targeted for entrapment by the FBI because of their conservative ideology.

Johnson is representing Pete Musico, one of the 14 arrested in the FBI sting. The attorneys claim the FBI turned the Wolverine Watchmen into a violent threat it was not before the informants got involved, according to the report.

Johnson's remarks come after BuzzFeed News reported this week, citing court filings, the FBI informants had an active part in the scheme from its inception.

It is just the latest example of claims the FBI uses questionable techniques to foil threats of domestic terror, according to the Post.

The so-called "Herald Square Bomber" was spurred on by an FBI informant and ultimately backed out of the plot, but was still arrested, The New York Times reported this spring.

Infamous Boston mobster Whitey Bulger denied it, but the FBI claimed he had been an informant for years beginning in 1975, the Post added.

And, much less prominently reported, the Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did not make the bombs that killed and maimed runners and onlookers in 2013, Newsweek reported in 2018, noting cops believe the FBI is protecting whoever did.

Claims of entrapment are a frequent defense for those busted by the FBI, according to Danny Coulson, who led the 1995 search for and arrest of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Still, he told the Post he has "very grave concerns" about the FBI today.

"The bureau's job is to collect evidence, not to develop informants," Coulson told the Post after the FBI tweeted earlier this month to watch "family members and peers" for signs of extremism. "That was inappropriate."

Coulson used to run the Portland, Ore., FBI office and he and others are "very upset" there have been no arrests of anti-government and anti-fascist protesters in Portland or Seattle after more than a year of violence, looting, and arson, but are homing in on Jan. 6 protesters who are still incarcerated for trespass of the Capitol.

"I am not demeaning what happened that day, but I'm asking why people are being punished at this level and others aren't," he told the Post. "In Portland and Seattle you clearly have federal laws being violated in plain sight and nothing done."

The questions about the FBI and potentially politicized justice were further exacerbated by the arrest of the lead agent of the Whitmer kidnapping plot investigation, Richard Trask.

Trask, 39, is alleged to have slammed his wife's head into a nightstand and choked her with both hands. His wife had "severe" bruises around her neck, court document show.

"I and many of my friends from the old FBI are completely astounded about seeing things that we would have moved on, being totally ignored over the past year," Wayne Manis, a former FBI agent, told the Post. "Burning a police station? Where are the arrests? There've been multiple incidents of violence by antifa and BLM activists that fall under FBI statutes. The majority of domestic terrorism is on the left, but we're being told it’s coming from the right."