Jan. 6 rioters the far right claimed were antifa keep getting unmasked as Trump supporters

WASHINGTON — In nearly three years since a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, far-right figures have made a claim that flies in the face of reality: That the Jan. 6 attack was actually driven by far-left antifa activists dressed up like Trump supporters, or by federal agents dressed up like Trump supporters, or by some combination thereof.

The only trouble with the conspiracy? The feds keep arresting these supposedly far-left agitators, and the rioters' own social media posts and FBI affidavits show they're just Trump supporters.

"Suspected ANTIFA trying to break windows at the Capitol," wrote one Jan. 6 participant on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in recent weeks, posting an old video that showed two black-clad men smashing at a window near the lower west tunnel, where some of the worst violence took place on Jan. 6.

This allegation wasn't entirely new. Video of the same two men had been circulated before, with claims that the black-clad duo were left-wing agitators. The rumors about the two men and other secret undercover antifa operatives began spreading on Jan. 6 itself, and were boosted by figures like Rep. Matt Gaetz. Some of the misinformation appears to have originated because other Jan. 6 participants who charged up the inauguration platform themselves appeared to believe that anyone wearing black — or anyone who would smash windows — were de facto members of antifa and couldn't possibly be Trump supporters.

"Boo, antifa!" one Trump supporter yelled in a video showing the two men trying to break the windows. "No antifa! No antifa! No antifa! Antifa are breaking the windows!"

In fact, the two men were not antifa. They were Trump supporters.

One of the men was arrested just last month: William Lewis, a 57-year-old from Illinois who was charged with felony counts of assaulting officers and civil disorder. Lewis was wearing mostly black and used "what appears to be a baton" to smash in a Capitol window, the FBI charges. Lewis also deployed what appeared to be a can of wasp and hornet spray at officers on three separate occasions on Jan. 6, authorities charge.

(Lewis made an initial appearance in federal court in Illinois and was released with an appearance bond of $4,500. He has not yet been indicted or arraigned, his attorney confirmed, so he has not entered a plea, but has another court appearance scheduled for Jan. 18.)

An NBC News review of Lewis' social media presence shows that he is a Trump supporter who disdains President Joe Biden. In late 2020, ahead of the Capitol attack, Lewis' Facebook page featured anti-Hunter Biden memes, a celebration of the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, reposts of both Donald Trump Jr. and then-Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, as well as praise for former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany: "Savage, Patriot, Fearless, Warrior 🇺🇲."

The other black-clad man isn't antifa either. He's Jonathan Munafo — a man known as a "Front Row Joe" because he camped out to get prime viewing spots at Trump rallies all across the country in the lead-up to Jan. 6. He was charged in relation to the Jan. 6 attack and sentenced in September to 33 months in prison. In addition to trying to smash the Capitol window, he was convicted of punching a Metropolitan Police Department officer twice and of stealing the officer’s riot shield.

Another recent Jan. 6 arrestee who had also been the subject of claims he was antifa is Paul Orta, who wore a dark-colored balaclava on Jan. 6 and was seen ripping down fencing as the mob began flooding onto the restricted grounds of the Capitol, in footage cited by the FBI. His outfit led many Trump supporters to claim he was a member of antifa.

But Orta, who was arrested and charged with a felony last month, was with a group that came to Washington in a Hippies 4 Trump bus covered in Trump 2020 graffiti. Other body-worn camera footage shows Orta carrying a large blue Trump flag outside the Justice Department while the crowd was en route to the Capitol from the location of Trump's rally.

After taking part in the initial breach of the fencing at the Capitol, federal officials say, Orta yelled, "We're taking that s--- today!" He then helped remove yet another barricade: metal bike racks that he threw over a concrete wall, authorities said. Orta then threw an unknown dark-colored object at police, joined other Trump supporters pushing against police, and advanced further up the inauguration platform.

(Orta made an initial appearance and was released on his own personal recognizance but has not yet entered a plea. His attorney declined to comment.)

Complicating the effort to shoot down conspiracies about the identities of individual rioters is the fact that there are hundreds of Jan. 6 participants who have been identified by online "sedition hunters" but not arrested. More than 1,200 people have been charged in connection with Jan. 6. There are about 1,000 Jan. 6 participants who have been identified but are not currently facing charges, say online sleuths, who have given hundreds of those suspects' names to the FBI.

Trump supporters and prominent GOP politicians have repeatedly pointed to supposed video evidence of alleged antifa operatives at the Capitol, only for reporters and online sleuths to identify the rioters in those clips as arrested Trump supporters.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, recently suggested that a Jan. 6 rioter holding an object in his hand was an undercover federal agent holding a badge. In fact, the man was a Trump supporter currently serving four years in federal prison after stealing items from Nancy Pelosi's office and the item he was holding appeared to be a vape. Trump supporters have also repeatedly surfaced a video of the initial breach of the Capitol, claiming that those masked men who first broke into the building must be antifa. But most of those men have been arrested and identified, like Trump supporter Edward Kelley, who the feds say was wearing the black sweatshirt of an anti-abortion organization when he jumped through a broken window and kicked open a fire door. Kelley has pleaded not guilty and is set to go on trial next year for allegedly conspiring to kill the federal agents investigating his Jan. 6 case and his co-defendant had admitted the duo conspired to “murder employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

But one of the most popular videos spread by those trying to shift blame for the Capitol attack involves a suspect who had not been arrested. It shows other Trump supporters ripping a man wearing a green helmet with a "Trump" sticker on it away from a Capitol window as he attempted to smash it open.

Online sleuths who have worked with the FBI to identify rioters say they identified the man featured in that photo long ago. The man, according to the sleuths and evidence reviewed by NBC News, was previously charged for threatening a Democratic official in his home state, his Facebook profile currently features the words "MAGA 4 EVER GOD SAVE OUR REPUBLIC 🇺🇸" and he appears to have even identified himself by name to a photographer who was on the scene as Trump supporters came back to the Capitol on Jan. 7. Despite the sleuths reporting him to the FBI nearly two years ago, he has not been arrested.

One of the other rioters who grabbed that man was Ed Badalian, a Trump supporter from California who came to D.C. to "arrest the traitors" with his friend Danny "D.J." Rodriguez, who drove a stun gun into former officer Mike Fanone's neck and was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison. Judge Amy Berman Jackson said at Badalian's sentencing in September that Badalian still “can’t let go of the false story of bringing down antifa.”

Judges have regularly dealt with Jan. 6 defendants who are still lost in online conspiracy theories. Many of those defendants, like former Police Chief Alan Hostetter, have latched onto the case of John Sullivan, an “anti-establishment” activist who stormed the Capitol and was caught on tape bragging that he'd "make those Trump supporters f--- s--- up.” Hostetter has said he believes that Jan. 6 was a setup from the beginning and brought up the Sullivan case in court, while representing himself. But he had trouble explaining how the handling of Sullivan's case — Sullivan was arrested, convicted on all charges after a trial last month and ordered detained until his sentencing — was part of some broad scheme by the "deep state."

Last week, Judge Beryl Howell had to deal with far-right attorneys who were asking the government for evidence about “ghost buses,” a term popularized by far-right Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., as he's spread a conspiracy theory that the FBI send busloads of undercover informants dressed as Trump supporters to infiltrate the Jan. 6 mob. (FBI Director Christopher Wray directly rebuffed Higgins' claim at a congressional hearing.)

Howell pushed back when attorneys representing a Jan. 6 defendant brought up the term. “What are you talking about? We are not going down rabbit holes in this case," Howell said. “Let’s stick to the facts in my courtroom, please.”

Even some Jan. 6 defendants who have admitted that they attacked law enforcement that day have blamed antifa for the violence at the Capitol, while others have gotten angry that their fellow Trump supporters were giving antifa credit for their work.

On Wednesday, Andrew Taake pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers on Jan. 6, admitting he attacked officers with both bear spray and a metal whip. But in a discussion with the woman who turned him into the FBI — she'd set up a sting on the Bumble dating app, hoping to elicit confessions — Taake claimed that antifa "incited" the violence and that majority of "the people attacking police" were antifa, even though he himself had attacked police.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Jonathan Mellis, whom online sleuths gave the nickname "Cowboy Screech" due to his cowboy hat and resemblance to the "Saved by the Bell" character. Before Mellis was sentenced to 51 months in federal prison on Wednesday, prosecutors played a video of him in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack in which he got worked up over Trump supporters crediting antifa with attacking the Capitol.

“It was Trumpers! We were there, and we were there to be heard, for sure," Mellis said. "We had a goal to occupy that f---ing Capitol building."

Mellis posted a similar message on Facebook after the attack. “Don’t you dare try to tell me that people are blaming this on antifa and BLM,” Mellis wrote, using the abbreviation for Black Lives Matter. “We proudly take responsibility for storming the Castle. Antifa and BLM or [sic] too p----."

In the lead-up to Jan. 6, authorities were primarily worried about a replay of clashes that took between pro-Trump and anti-Trump protesters in Washington, D.C., in November and December of 2020. But the reality on Jan. 6 was that most left-wing activists stayed away, knowing they’d be far outnumbered. Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue later said that open-source intelligence suggested that Jan. 6 "would essentially be a one-sided protest," which was a "relief" because, in their mind, it lessened the potential for violence.

Many Trump supporters, on the other hand, came to the nation's capital expecting to see antifa around every corner. The fact that the pro-Trump Proud Boys talked about going to Jan. 6 "incognito" and dressed in black only confused more typical Trump supporters, or "normies," as the Proud Boys call them. The constant coverage of Black Lives Matter and anti-Trump protests on conservative media led to a funhouse mirror effect, with Trump supporters saying in videos, social media posts and in court that they were primed to see antifa all over Washington when they were looking at their fellow Trump supporters.

“I was going to be super hard and go punch a antifa terrorist in the face. And I end up being the terrorist," former West Virginia Councilman Eric Barber, later sentenced to 45 days in prison, said in his FBI interview. "Plot twist, huh?”

CORRECTION (Dec. 23, 2023, 9:22 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of the former acting deputy attorney general. His name is Richard Donoghue, not Donohue.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com