EXCLUSIVE: Senate Republicans are demanding answers on whether confidential human sources from Justice Department agencies beyond the FBI were used on Jan. 6, 2021, while also questioning whether Inspector General Michael Horowitz thoroughly reviewed classified and unclassified communications between handlers and their sources, warning that without that review, there may be a “major blind spot” in his findings. 

Horowitz last week released his highly anticipated report that there were more than two dozen FBI confidential human sources in the crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but only three were assigned by the bureau to be present for the event. Horowitz said none of the sources were authorized or directed by the FBI to “break the law” or “encourage others to commit illegal acts.” 

But now, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., are demanding further information from Horowitz, writing to him in a letter exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital that it is “unclear” if his office reviewed the use of confidential human sources by other DOJ components during the Capitol riot. 

DOJ IG REVEALS 26 FBI INFORMANTS WERE PRESENT ON JAN. 6

“This IG report was a step in the right direction, but Senator Johnson and I still have questions the Justice Department needs to account for,” Grassley told Fox News Digital. “The American people deserve a full picture of whether Justice Department sources from its component agencies, in addition to the FBI, were present on January 6, what their role was, and whether DOJ had knowledge of their attendance.” 

Grassley told Fox News Digital that Horowitz and his team “must redouble its efforts to make sure it has reviewed all relevant information and provide a sufficient response to our inquiry.” 

Sen. Chuck Grassley in the U.S. Capitol after the Senate luncheons on Sept. 24, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Johnson told Fox News Digital he believes the report made public last week “may have only provided a fraction of the story regarding the presence and activities of confidential human sources or undercover federal agents in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021.” 

“I urge the Inspector General’s office to be fully transparent about their work to ensure that Congress and the public have an accurate and complete understanding about what it actually reviewed,” Johnson said.

DOJ INSPECTOR GENERAL DOES NOT DENY FBI INFORMANTS WERE AMONG JAN 6 CROWD

In their letter to Horowitz, Grassley and Johnson noted that the inspector general’s office received more than 500,000 documents from the Justice Department and its components as part of its investigation. 

“According to the report, your office obtained: CHS reporting, thousands of tips provided to the FBI, investigative and intelligence records from the FBI case management system, emails, instant messages, and phone records; contemporaneous notes of meetings and telephone calls; chronologies concerning the lead-up of events to January 6; after-action assessments; training materials and policy guides; and preparatory materials for press conferences or congressional testimony as well as talking points,” they wrote. 

Grassley and Johnson told Horowitz “it is vital” that his office “more precisely explain what records it sought and received from all DOJ component agencies.” 

Grassley and Johnson are demanding answers on whether Horowitz obtained evidence on whether other DOJ component agencies had tasked or untasked undercover confidential human sources in the Washington, D.C., area or at the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. 

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They are also asking if all communications were obtained between DOJ component agency handlers and confidential human sources or undercover agents present in the D.C. area, and whether he has received classified and unclassified non-email communication platforms used by the FBI. 

Grassley and Johnson are also demanding Horowitz share all FD-1023 forms, or confidential human source reporting documents, used in the investigation with them. 

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz speaks during a Senate Judiciary hearing on Sept. 15. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

As for his initial report, Horowitz “determined that none of these FBI CHSs was authorized by the FBI to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.” 

The report revealed that the FBI had a minor supporting role in responding on Jan. 6, 2021 – largely because the event was not deemed at the highest security level by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 

Horowitz, though, said the FBI took significant and appropriate steps to prepare for that role. 

According to the report, there were a total of 26 confidential human sources in the crowd that day, but only three of them were assigned by the bureau to be there. 

One of the three confidential human sources tasked by the FBI to attend the rally entered the Capitol building, while the other two entered the restricted area around the Capitol. 

If a confidential human source is directed to be at a certain event, they are paid by the FBI for their time.

WASHINGTON —  Senior U.S. diplomats traveled to Damascus Friday and held a first-ever meeting with the rebels who toppled longtime dictator Bashar Assad. Washington officially regards the rebel group as terrorists.

U.S. officials said they pressed the transitional government established by rebels to respect the rights of Syria’s numerous ethnic and religious sects as well as women. They said they received new leads on the fate of long-missing American journalist Austin Tice but could not reach a conclusion about his whereabouts or whether he is alive.

In an initial gesture of goodwill, the Biden administration canceled a $10-million bounty it had placed on the head of the rebels’ leader, Ahmed Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammad Julani.

Barbara Leaf, the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East and leader of the delegation, said it made sense to remove the reward since she and the other officials were meeting with him face-to-face.

Leaf was accompanied by Roger Carstens, the administration’s lead official for hostage negotiations, and former special envoy for Syria Daniel Rubinstein. They spoke by telephone to reporters after departing Damascus.

It was the first time U.S. officials have formally visited Damascus since the U.S. Embassy there was shuttered in 2012 as the country descended into a savage civil war. Backed by Russia and Iran, the Assad regime is believed to have killed tens of thousands of people, while many more were tortured in crowded, dismal secret prisons.

Assad fled the country two weeks ago as rebels led by Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, stormed Damascus. It was a swift and spectacular collapse of a dynastic regime that terrorized the nation for half a century.

But the next steps are complicated for U.S. policymakers. Washington has formally labeled HTS a terrorist group. HTS traces its roots to terror groups Islamic State and Al Qaeda but claims it has reformed. The designation carries with it numerous economic sanctions and complicates assistance from aid groups or other parties.

Leaf would not say whether HTS would be removed from the terror list or if sanctions would be lifted.

Asked if she believed Sharaa had become a more moderate leader, Leaf seemed willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. She described him as “pragmatic” and the talks as “quite good, very productive, detailed,” covering “a wide set of issues, domestic and external.”

“We’ve been hearing this for some time, some very pragmatic and moderate statements on various issues from women’s rights to protection of equal rights for all communities, etc.,” Leaf said. “It was a good first meeting. We will judge by deeds, not just by words. Deeds are the critical thing.”

Carstens said U.S. officials had believed Assad maintained around a dozen clandestine prisons, but as victims emerge and information comes to light, it appears there could have been 40 or more. While the U.S. has been working with what Carstens called credible evidence that Tice, the journalist, may have been held in as many as six prisons, new information indicates he might have been at one or two others. Searching is slow-going because the U.S. still has a limited presence in Syria, primarily a few hundred troops but no diplomatic or law enforcement personnel.

“We’re going to be like bulldogs on this,” Carstens said. “We’re not going to stop until we find the information that we need to conclude what has happened to Austin, where he is, and to return him home to his family.”

Tice, a freelance reporter who would be 43 years old now, was snatched by gunmen at a checkpoint near Damascus in August 2012 and has not been heard from since.

As President Biden’s term comes to an end, he is reportedly considering commuting the sentences of most, if not all, of the 40 men on the federal government’s death row.

The Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported that the move would frustrate President-elect Trump’s plan to streamline executions as he takes office in January.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who oversees federal prisons, recommended that Biden commute all but a handful of egregious sentences, the sources said.

The outlet reported that possible exceptions could include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber who killed three and wounded more than 250; Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh; and Dylann Roof, who in 2015 killed nine at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

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Those who could see their death sentences commuted to life in prison include an ex-Marine who killed two young girls and later a female naval officer, a Las Vegas man convicted of kidnapping and killing a 12-year-old girl, a Chicago podiatrist who fatally shot a patient to keep her from testifying in a Medicare fraud investigation and two men convicted in a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme that resulted in the killings of five Russian and Georgian immigrants.

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The move came after Biden, a lifelong Catholic, spoke with Pope Francis Thursday. In his weekly prayer, Pope Francis asked for the commutation of America’s condemned inmates.

A decision from the president could come by Christmas, some of sources said. The outlet noted that the biggest question is the scope of the commutation of the death row inmates.

President Biden speaks at a podium (AP )

Biden is the first president to openly oppose capital punishment, and his 2020 campaign website declared he would “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.”

In January 2021, Biden initially considered an executive order, sources familiar with the matter told The Associated Press, but the White House did not issue one.

Six months into the administration, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium on federal capital punishment to study it further. The narrow action has meant there have been no federal executions under Biden.