An FBI official on Wednesday testified at a Senate hearing that she has no knowledge of any guns being recovered from suspects who were arrested during the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
When asked by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) about whether firearms were recovered or if any suspect was charged with firearms offenses, FBI counterterrorism chief Jill Sanborn responded: “To my knowledge, none.”
But in the hearing, Sanborn also said that before the Jan. 6 incident, “We knew they would be armed, we had intelligence that they would be coming to DC, but we did not have intelligence that they would be breaching the Capitol.”
Johnson previously told news outlets that the term “armed insurrection” used by some Democratic officials, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and mainstream news outlets is incorrect as no guns were recovered. The only shooting involved an officer-involved shooting that left one protester, Ashli Babbitt, dead. The officer’s identity has yet to be disclosed.
“I would say, if it’s properly termed an ‘armed insurrection,’ it was a pretty ragtag one,” Johnson said in an interview with the New York Times last week. “This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me. When you hear the word ‘armed,’ don’t you think of firearms? Here’s the questions I would have liked to ask: How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired?” he also said.
Johnson added: “If that was a planned armed insurrection, you really have a bunch of idiots.”
