(CNN)Blake Masters, the Republican Senate candidate from Arizona, met with conservative activists at a Phoenix IHOP this spring and was asked whether he would support investigating US intelligence operations to uncover the federal government's "nefarious activities."
Masters replied, "Absolutely," and then floated the conspiracy theory that the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol actually may have been a false-flag operation set up by the FBI, according to a recording of the March 30 meeting obtained by CNN.
"Don't we suspect that like one-third of the people outside of the Capitol complex on January 6 were actual FBI agents hanging out," Masters asked at the GrassRoots Tea Party Activists of Arizona event. "What did people know and when did they know it? We got to get to the bottom of this."
Masters is part of a wave of Republicans who have won the coveted endorsement of former President Donald Trump after parroting his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and downplaying the actions of the pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol last year.
While top Republicans like Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell have urged candidates to move on from 2020 and focus on the future, some, like Masters, are aligning themselves with Trump in the hopes of tapping into his base of support.
After launching his Senate campaign last year, Masters has increasingly embraced the former President's bogus claims. He told CNN in July "it's really hard to know" whether Trump won,...
PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar instructed officials to prepare a defamation lawsuit against "one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published" on Israel. Israel wi...