SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Greg Rodgers, a former FBI agent who worked undercover in right-wing militia groups, said Wednesday’s violence at the U.S. Capitol was predictable.

He did the undercover work for about 20 of his 30 years in the FBI.

“There was no doubt that was going to happen yesterday,” Rodgers said.

I talked with a former FBI agent, who for years went undercover with militia groups. On @KSL5TV at 5&6:30, hear why he says it was totally predictable that a small percentage of those groups would act violently, at the US Capitol, and that police there should have been ready. pic.twitter.com/xHAXlxoRNK

— Mike Anderson (@mikeandersonKSL) January 7, 2021

He believes U.S. Capitol Police should have had help from other agencies like the National Guard or D.C. police to fortify and protect the Capitol.

Rodgers said there are people who work to prevent this kind of violence and attacks from within our own country.

“I mean there’s no surprise that there was going to be a huge number of militia members from all over the country,” he explained.

Rogers said not only were the plans being made on social media, but he’s certain undercover agents would have warned law enforcement to be ready.

“I’m confident that they underestimated. They thought that this was going to be a big peaceful thing, like as they’ve had several of those rallies that have been peaceful,” he said.

Granted, these criticisms aren’t easy for him to make. “I’m a huge fan of cops. I’m very proud that I was one for 30 years,” Rogers said. “You can’t be a big supporter and be naive, and yesterday was a mistake.”

He called for changes to make sure this won’t happen again and to pay more attention to what these groups are doing now.

“If people think today that they’re feeling bad about what they did, they’re looking at this incorrectly because it’s validating what they did and their opinion of how they’re looked at, how they’re discounted,” Rodgers said.

He warned these groups that already feel marginalized will argue that news coverage is mistreating them, condemning their violence more than what we saw over the summer, and he said it will be a recruiting tool.

“They going to use that to say, ‘Look at the way we treat true patriots,’ which is what they think they are,” Rogers said. “They’re going to say, ‘Look at the way they cover things when true patriots act out.’”

Rodgers added that reaction from national leaders will matter too. “Intellectually honest political leaders need to say, ‘We condemn violence, no matter who commits it,'” he said.

He said the majority of these militia members are not violent — they just want to hang out with like-minded people.

Rodgers said a small minority are violent and when you get multiple groups together you can get what we saw Wednesday.