Tucker Carlson roasted for suggesting the FBI was behind the Capitol insurrection

Tucker Carlson claiming on Fox News that “FBI operatives were organising the attack on the Capitol” has been met with criticism online.

The conservative host of Tucker Carlson Tonight made the claim on his broadcast on Tuesday, which Media Matters For America has labelled a “bizarre conspiracy theory”.

“It means that in potentially every single case they were FBI operatives.” Carlson claimed on his show. “Really? In the Capitol on January 6th?”

He cited an article by Revolver News that focused on the case of Thomas Caldwell, 66, a member of Oath Keepers, a far-right group that is considered “one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the US today” by the Southern Poverty Law Centre.

Mr Caldwell is being indicted for his alleged involvement in the attempted coup during the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. Carlson went on to say there were two unnamed people on the court documents that led to the man’s indictment, who are not charged.

“These two are not alone. Revolver News reported that there are ‘20 unindicted co-conspirators in the Oathkeeper indictments all playing various roles in the conspiracy, who have not been charged for virtually the exact same activities.”

Viewers of the clip took to Twitter to express their confusion at these claims.

“Tucker Carlson’s latest take on the Jan. 6th attack on the capitol is that it was actually an FBI false flag,” wrote Nikki McCann Ramirez.

She continued, comparing his conclusion to that of shock jock Alex Jones, who is banned from mainstream platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for his spread of misinformation.

“Tucker Carlson is heavily implying the FBI orchestrated the January 6th riot using the standard of proof you’d expect from Alex Jones,” she tweeted.

She went into detail why there might be unnamed people on the court documents, stating that people were probably cooperating with the federal investigation, and therefore there was the potential to get out of prosecution or receive a lighter punishment for giving relevant information to the authorities.

“The reason there are un-indicted co-conspirators in Jan. 6th cases is because the right is a f***ing snitchfest and everyone from Tario to mee-maw and pop-pop are trying to get that plea deal,” she said.

“That escalated fast. From “almost certainly the FBI” seconds later he made it sound official: “according to government documents”, another user wrote.

“Yes I had to rewatch to try & figure out where I missed that ‘evidence’ but clearly this is him stating opinion as fact. I don’t understand why it’s legal to do this, it seems dangerous in this case to make unfounded assertions like this,” another wrote in reply.

Other users said it was quite an assumption to make based on the information given by the court documents.

“The government has not ‘named’ individual 2 and individual 3. Therefore, the government has “confirmed” that they are government agents? That’s quite a leap there, Beamon,” wrote another person.

Another said, “Tucker is all performance. No art.”

Other people on the social networking site brought up the court case where he argued that his show is “exaggeration’ and “non literal commentary” during a libel claim.

Steve Johnson said, “[Carlson] is not ‘stating actual facts’ about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in ‘exaggeration’ and ‘non-literal commentary.’ “ Quote from Carlsons lawyers !” as he tweeted a screenshot from a article from NPR.

The Senate failed to approve a commission to investigate the insurrection, with the motion falling six votes short. Biden will not launch his own as “Congress itself has a unique role and ability to carry out that investigation”, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said to Axios.

According to a Forbes report from April, Mr Carlson’s show gets more than 500,000 views a night.