Mrs. Ingraham, who told Fox News viewers about “antifa supporters” in the riot later shared on Twitter that the Washington Times article she cited was unmasked; she did not issue a correction in the air. Mr. Herman, Limbaugh’s guest host who speculated about the antifa, wrote in an email on Saturday that “it became clear that a large group of Trump supporters entered the Capitol and attacked people.” But he continued to falsely claim that antifa activists planned to pose as Trump supporters.
Of the 290 people accused in the attack, at least 27 are known to have ties to extreme right-wing groups, such as the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys. Others have ties to neo-confederate and white supremacist entities, or are supporters of the QAnon conspiracy movement. The vast majority expressed a fervent belief that Mr. Trump was the legitimate winner of the election.
On January 8, the FBI said there was no evidence that antifa supporters, who were known for aggressively counter-protests against white supremacy, participated in the Capitol crowd. And on January 13, Congressman Kevin McCarthy, leader of the Republican minority in the House, spoke at Trump’s impeachment trial and declared: “Some say the disturbances were caused by antifa. There is absolutely no evidence for this, and conservatives should be the first to say so. “
But the next day, the arrest of a protester named John Sullivan sparked yet another rise in the right-wing media about antifa and riot.
Mr. Sullivan called himself a Utah “activist” and CNN incorrectly introduced him as a “leftist activist” when he appeared on the network on January 6. (He sold images to CNN and other media that showed the murder of Ashli Babbitt, a hooligan who died inside the Capitol.) The conspiracy website Gateway Pundit and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, took advantage of the Sullivan’s arrest for again blaming antifa on posts that collected tens of thousands of likes and shares on Facebook and Twitter.
In reality, Mr. Sullivan was an attention seeker whose policies were fungible and apparently changed based on what protest he was participating at the time, according to activists in Seattle, Salt Lake City and Portland, Oregon, published warnings about him months before the Capitol riot.