• FBI documents show that agents tried to track down who was behind the QAnon extremist movement.
  • But the agents could not figure out the identity of the leader of the conspiracy movement. 
  • FBI New York agents opened an investigation in 2018 into the matter, but closed it in 2019.

Newly-released FBI documents show that agents tried to track down who was behind the far-right, conspiracy-laden, extremist movement QAnon, but they apparently couldn’t figure it out. 

Records recently released by the federal agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act request show that New York FBI agents opened an investigation in August 2018 — during the Trump administration — “based on allegations that an unknown person was posing as a federal government official on internet message boards using the name QAnon.”

The person, the FBI said, had been “potentially profiting off and/or inciting violence by use of their false personation.”

FBI agents said in the unclassified records when the investigation was opened that the anonymous person behind QAnon “has not publicly revealed their identity” and that “it is unknown whether QAnon is actually affiliated with the US Government.”

“It is also unknown whether QAnon is profiting off of the assertion that they are a government employee,” the agents wrote. 

The FBI’s New York field office requested to close its investigation into the matter in January 2019, saying that it has “taken all logical and reasonable investigative steps warranted by the situation,” the records show. 

The documents say that the FBI New York office “attempted” to identify the leader behind the QAnon internet persona through subpoenas, but it did not appear to come up with a conclusion. 

.content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; }