Fox executive over Heinrich’s reporting. 2021 U.S. Capitol attack In February 2021, after attorney general nominee Merrick Garland pledged at his confirmation hearing to supervise the prosecution of "white supremacists and others" involved in the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Carlson alleged, "There's no evidence that white supremacists were responsible for what happened on January 6. That's a lie." PolitiFact rated Carlson's claim false, because several rioters had known ties to white supremacist groups, according to court records and congressional testimony by law enforcement leaders, and video and photos from the incident showed white supremacist symbols prominently displayed. Philip Bump of The Washington Post wrote in an analysis that Carlson was blurring the lines between "being involved" and "being responsible for" to create a strawman in an effort to "undercut the public understanding of what happened and, by extension, to soften the implications for Trump and his supporters". Carlson has also inaccurately stated that "[n]ot a single person in the crowd on January 6 was found to be carrying a firearm." In June 2021, Carlson promoted a conspiracy theory alleging that the Capitol storming was a "false flag" FBI operation intended to "suppress political dissent". He alleged that unindicted co-conspirators in rioters' indictments were government agents, saying, "FBI operatives were organizing the attack on the Capitol on January 6, according to government documents". Legal experts said Carlson's claim was unfounded because prosecutors cannot describe an undercover agent as an unindicted co-conspirator. One of the unindicted co-conspirators was readily identifiable as Stewart Rhodes, founder and leader of Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government militia; another unindicted co-conspirator was likely the wife of an indicted alleged conspirator. Carlson's guest, Darren Beattie of Revolver News, whose writing the segment was primarily based on, had been fired as a Trump speechwriter in 2018 after CNN asked the White House about his attendance at a gathering of white nationalists. Carlson also said Russian president Vladimir Putin raised "fair questions" when Putin mentioned the fatal police shooting of a rioter inside the Capitol while denying involvement in the poisoning of a Russian politician. Republican House members Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene quickly embraced Carlson's story about FBI involvement in the Capitol attack, and Republican congressman Paul Gosar entered the Revolver News story into the Congressional Record during a House Oversight Committee hearing. In response to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley's defense of studying