(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In the wake of the deadly 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, the FBI conducted more than 100 eyewitness interviews along with talking to the friends and family of James Alex Fields Jr.—the 20-year-old Ohio man who drove his car into a crowd of counterprotestors, killing onlooker Heather Heyer and injuring several others in the process.
The FBI also tapped into its network of confidential informants for its investigation, according to records released by the bureau last week. The records document the FBI’s investigation into the killing of Heyer, which ultimately resulted in Fields being sentenced to life in prison.
The records are heavily redacted, with dozens of them still sealed by order of a judge. But the FBI’s file does show that more than 50 pages of the records are redacted subject to section b7D of the Freedom of Information Act, which is the part of the law that protects the identities of confidential human sources—also known as informants.
🚨 FBI informants were used in the investigation into the death of Heather Heyer, the counterprotestor killed at the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally.
Indeed, more than 50(!!!!) pages of records released last week are redacted subject to FOIA section b7D, which is the… pic.twitter.com/m4Vca7Ypgm— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) January 6, 2025
Some of the pages are withheld entirely, while others reveal snippets of conversations the FBI had with its informants.
“[REDACTED] was currently out of town … [REDACTED] stated that he would be returning to [REDACTED] shortly and has agreed to have further contact with the FBI,” one bureau memo from Aug. 15, 2017, stated, appearing to show that agents had successfully recruited an informant.
Another memo’s two line-synopsis said that a confidential informant reported something—it doesn’t say what—to the FBI on Aug. 14, 2017.
It’s unclear why the FBI was utilizing informants in a case that seemed relatively clearcut. Fields was arrested later in the day that he hit Heyer, and he admitted to law enforcement that he drove his car into the crowd because he was “scared” and thought he was under attack. Several other rallygoers were later charged for marching with torches the night before, but information from FBI informants didn’t come to play in those cases, either.
Earlier in the day, Fields had been carrying a shield with a white nationalist group called Vanguard America, which has since rebranded as the Patriot Front. Fields and the group both say they had no prior connection.
The FBI may have been using its informants to see if Fields was a Vanguard America member, or whether he had any other associations in the white nationalist movement. As Headline USA has reported, the FBI has informants throughout the U.S. neo-Nazi movement.
Indeed, the National Socialist Movement, which participated and committed violence at the “Unite the Right” rally, was established in the 1970s as an FBI front group—as revealed by a Headline USA investigation in September 2023.
Court records further show that the NSM was part of a larger neo-Nazi coalition called the Nationalist Front, an alliance comprising a number of other groups at Charlottesville that were allegedly infiltrated by the FBI, including the League of the South. Vanguard America, which is now Patriot Front, was also part of that Nationalist Front.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
