Nearly 40 percent of Fox News viewers believe FBI organized deadly Jan. 6 riot: survey

04 January 2024

This Saturday, January 6, will mark the third anniversary of the Capitol insurrection. On January 6, 2021, a violent mob of then-President Donald Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol Building in the hope of stopping Congress from certifying now-President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory.

But many far-right conspiracy theorists have insisted without evidence that the attackers weren't really MAGA Republicans or Trump voters — that they were, in reality, Antifa leftists who conspired with the FBI to discredit Trump and the MAGA movement.

A new Washington Post/University of Maryland poll finds that GOP voters — especially those who watch Fox News — are the most likely to believe that the FBI was behind the January 6 insurrection.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

In an article published on January 4, Post reporters Tom Jackman, Scott Clement, Emily Guskin and Spencer S. Hsu explain, "The Post-UMD poll finds 39 percent of Americans who say Fox News is their primary news source believe the FBI organized and encouraged the January 6 attack, compared with 16 percent of CNN or MSNBC viewers and 13 percent who get most of their news from ABC, CBS or NBC. The poll finds 44 percent of those who voted for Trump say the FBI instigated the attack."

The journalists note that "among Republicans, 34 percent say the FBI organized and encouraged the insurrection, compared with 30 percent of independents and 13 percent of Democrats."

According to Jackman, Clement, Guskin and Hsu, "The results confirm that misinformation about January 6 is widespread as the United States heads into a presidential election year, during a campaign in which the former president and leading 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed support for those who participated in the insurrection. Despite a detailed congressional investigation and more than 725 completed federal prosecutions of January 6 participants that did not yield evidence of FBI involvement, a substantial minority of Americans still embrace conspiracy theories not unlike the ones that drove many rioters to storm the Capitol three years ago."

The poll, they add, clearly reflects "partisan divisions" in the United States.

"Almost 8 in 10 Democrats, 77 percent, say the those who entered the Capitol were 'mostly violent,” compared with 18 percent of Republicans, down slightly from 26 percent in 2021," according to the Post reporters.

Read the Washington Post's full report at this link (subscription required).

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