More evidence emerged Tuesday confirming the Biden administration’s politicization of federal law enforcement’s January 6 Capitol Hill riot investigation as Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-Ky.) released new documents in the panel’s continuing probe.

“A free society cannot tolerate a system in which programs and authorities intended to keep the public safe are instead weaponized against them due to mere suspicion,” Paul said in a statement. “The records released today show how an unverified tip that the FBI failed to substantiate led to nearly two years of surveillance of an innocent American. I am grateful for FBI Director Kash Patel’s cooperation in producing these records, and I appreciate Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem for ending the Quiet Skies program. The conduct revealed by these documents underscores the need to limit the power of faceless bureaucrats who have too often infringed on the rights of the people.”

The official documents made public by Paul can be viewed here.

Quiet Skies was a covert Transportation Security Administration (TSA) program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that sought to identify individuals using commercial aviation who were potential terrorist threats. Anonymous Federal Air Marshalls observed and recorded the conduct of suspects, based on their travel patterns. The program was plagued from its beginning with claims of improper and politicized surveillance, prompting Paul to launch an investigation in 2025. President Donald Trump ordered the cancellation of the program in June last year.

The Senate panel first learned of the FBI’s two-year surveillance of Texas Catholic school teacher Christine Crowder during a September 2025 hearing when her husband, Mark, who is a Federal Air Marshall, became a whistle blower and described the situation to Paul and committee colleagues.

Christine Crowder was in the nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, to attend the rally on the Ellipse in support of Trump. She came to the attention of federal investigators in the months after the rally and the subsequent riot on Capitol Hill that resulted in more than 1,500 arrests. Crowder was not among those arrested.

A total of 608 of those arrested were charged with assaulting, resisting, or interfering with law enforcement, and of those, 174 were also charged with using a deadly weapon. Only three gunshots were confirmed fired during the riot, including one by a Capitol Hill police officer that killed demonstrator Ashli Babbitt, and two by John Banuelos, a rioter who was subsequently charged. Trump has since granted clemency to Banuelos and 1,600 other rioters.

Crowder’s surveillance was launched after a former friend provided information that was never verified by FBI investigators. The documents released by Paul demonstrate that officials still labelled Crowder a domestic terrorist despite the fact that initial facial recognition and geolocation search results were negative and Crowder had no prior record of criminal or terrorist activity.

“Even after initially failing to confirm her identity, the Biden-era FBI subjected Mrs. Crowder to physical surveillance, federal watch-listing, continuous airport surveillance while traveling and referred her case for prosecution. That referral was made before the FBI could positively identify her and ultimately rested on what proved to be a case of mistaken identity,” the Paul statement said.

Federal officials finally dropped the prosecution after a confidential human source provided a photograph that proved Crowder had been mistaken for an individual labeled by riot investigators as “Insider #336,” who had entered the U.S. Capitol illegally.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform also investigated the Quiet Skies program and found that it frequently violated aviation security protocols. “The program’s $200 million annual cost proved unjustifiable given its failure to prevent a single terrorist incident, while simultaneously serving as a mechanism for preferential treatment based on political affiliations rather than legitimate security considerations,” the oversight panel’s chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), said in a June 2025 statement.