On the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Senate Republicans released new investigative findings alleging the Biden administration improperly placed the wife of a federal air marshal on a terrorist watchlist based on unverified information.
The report, released by Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, centers on documents obtained from Biden-era FBI detailing how Christine Crowder, a Catholic school teacher and the wife of senior federal air marshal Mark Crowder, was placed on a federal terrorist watch list and surveilled for over two years following an anonymous tip tied to her participation in the Washington, D.C. protest on Jan. 6, 2021.
According to the committee’s findings, an anonymous “former friend” contacted the FBI in early 2021, alleging Crowder had unlawfully entered the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot. However, internal records reviewed by the committee revealed the FBI failed to corroborate the allegation through geolocation data, facial recognition, criminal history, or other evidence linking Crowder to extremist activity.
Despite those gaps, the bureau recommended she be added to federal watchlists and flagged to the Transportation Security Administration.
President Donald Trump last year pardoned or commuted sentences for roughly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants, a move Democrats and some law enforcement groups criticized as undermining accountability for violent offenders.
Yet thousands of supporters of Trump who came to the U.S. Capitol that day to protest his defeat to the incoming President Joe Biden were not involved in the storming of the Capitol, despite the stigma that has been placed on everyone protesting the results in D.C. that day, leading many Republicans to call for accountability over what they see as an overly broad abuse of justice and surveillance that ensued in the months and years following the riot.
Mark Crowder testified before the committee on Sept. 30 that he learned of the watchlisting while performing his own duties as an air marshal.
“I discovered my wife, Christine, had been flagged in the system as a domestic terrorist, falsely accused of entering the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021,” Crowder told senators during a hearing on TSA watchlisting practices.
The investigation escalated rather than narrowed. FBI agents physically surveilled Crowder’s home at least four times between 2021 and 2022 to identify her and her property, according to the report. The U.S. Attorney’s Office accepted the case for potential prosecution without fully verifying Crowder’s identity and later directed agents to conduct social media analysis in an effort to substantiate the original allegation.
By late 2022, the bureau had begun to dig even deeper into Crowder’s personal online accounts. On Oct. 27 that year, the FBI executed a search warrant on her Facebook account via the platform’s “Law Enforcement Portal,” according to the committee’s report.
The inquiry continued even after an informant provided a photograph, raising doubts about whether Crowder was the individual seen at the Capitol. Additional records indicate that the FBI did not formally close the investigation until June 2023, nearly two years after it began.
Her husband testified in September that the prolonged investigation created operational conflicts inside the federal air marshal service. At one point, he said, surveillance teams assigned to monitor his wife had to coordinate with him while he was working on the same flight. He warned lawmakers that the case illustrated a broader shift in federal priorities following Jan. 6.
“Politically motivated priorities diverted critical resources from genuine security threats,” Crowder said, describing the episode as “a weaponization of federal law enforcement to harass and intimidate citizens exercising their constitutional rights.”
Paul’s committee has been examining federal watchlisting practices as part of a broader investigation into the Transportation Security Administration’s now-terminated Quiet Skies program. Internal reviews found that Quiet Skies subjected individuals to enhanced screening without due process, including people merely suspected of traveling to Washington, D.C., around Jan. 6.
JAN. 6 DEFENDANTS PLAN ‘PEACEFUL MARCH’ AT CAPITOL IN MEMORY OF SLAIN VETERAN ASHLI BABBITT
The committee’s findings come months after the Department of Homeland Security formally terminated the TSA’s Quiet Skies program, a watchlisting initiative DHS said cost taxpayers roughly $200 million annually and failed to stop a single terrorist attack. In a June 5 press release, the DHS stated that internal reviews uncovered documents and correspondence indicating that the program was applied inconsistently and used for political purposes rather than addressing legitimate aviation security threats.
“It is clear that the Quiet Skies program was used as a political rolodex of the Biden administration—weaponized against its political foes and exploited to benefit their well-heeled friends,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said at the time, calling for further congressional investigation.
