Bob Unruh had a new spin on an old Capitol riot conspiracy theory in a Feb. 14 WorldNetDaily article:
There long have been suspicions that there were a multitude of federal agents at the U.S. Capitol during that riot on Jan. 6, 2021, egging on protesters who eventually did break a few doors and windows and left behind other evidence of vandalism.
The fact the federal government repeatedly has refused to provide details about those provocateurs just adds to the concern there was such an agenda.
Now there’s another situation that raises eyebrows: A man apparently climbing a scaffolding and firing a handgun into the air on the fateful day, but no evidence of his eventual arrest.
NBC outlines the details stemming from “newly unearthed footage from Jan. 6.
It “appears to show a rioter — a man identified in an NBC News story nearly two years ago — firing a gun into the air outside the Capitol during the attack. Online sleuths who have aided in hundreds of Jan. 6 prosecutions say he is the same man they identified to the FBI, who is currently individual no. 200 on the bureau’s Capitol Violence page, which he first appeared on three years ago. Videos and photographs from the Capitol on Jan. 6 showed him with what appears to be a gun in his waistband. As NBC News previously reported, that man, John Emanuel Banuelos, told Salt Lake City police that he was at the Capitol and had been captured on film with a gun. ‘I was in the D.C. riots,’ he told the investigators, according to a police transcript. ‘I’m the one in the video with the gun right here.'”
But, the report noted, he’s not been arrested or charged in any way for actions on that day.
Needless to say, Unruh offered no evidence whatsoever that Banuelos was a “federal agent” serving to provoke rioters into violence — he’s just offering an old, discredited story. He also failed to note that this discredits a longtime narrative by those seeking to dismiss the riot that nobody there was armed with a weapon and merely broke a few doors and windows.
Unruh also spoke too soon. A few weeks after his article was published, Banuelos was arrested in relation to his actions at the Capitol that day. Unruh — along with everyone else at WND — has yet to do a story about that.