The FBI under the Biden administration surveilled a Texas Catholic schoolteacher for nearly two years after receiving an unverified tip that linked her to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, and even placed her on a terrorist watch list, according to congressional findings released Jan. 6 by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
In a statement released alongside the findings, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who chairs the committee, described the case as a stark example of political weaponization under the previous administration.
“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. “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.”
FILES RELEASED
Today, I am releasing investigative files that expose how the Biden administration weaponized the FBI, DOJ, and TSA against Christine Crowder, an innocent American & Catholic school teacher.
The documents are now public.https://t.co/qlz1Z4n4rW
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) January 6, 2026
According to a detailed timeline released by the committee, the FBI placed Christine Crowder, the Catholic schoolteacher, on the watchlist and subjected her to extensive monitoring beginning in January 2021 after an anonymous tipster claimed to recognize her in Capitol riot footage.
However, committee documents show that Crowder had attended a Trump rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, but did not enter the Capitol. Despite finding that early facial recognition analysis and geolocation checks did not match her to individuals inside the Capitol, FBI investigators conducted in-person surveillance of Crowder’s home on at least four occasions, obtained a warrant for her Facebook account, and placed her on a travel watchlist, according to the committee report.
The investigation continued for 23 months before the FBI closed the case in June 2023 after concluding Crowder was elsewhere in Washington at the time of the Capitol breach.
“After conducting pertinent checks, FBI found no evidence that Crowder definitively entered the Capitol Building. At the time Crowder was supposedly exiting the Capitol, she was elsewhere in D.C.,” the bureau wrote in its closing finding, according to FOX News.
Crowder’s husband, Mark Crowder — a federal air marshal described by lawmakers as a whistleblower — testified during a congressional hearing in 2025 that his colleagues also received orders to monitor his wife and family “minute-by-minute” as they traveled, the committee said.
The case emerged amid a broader committee investigation into the federal government’s use of flight watchlists for surveillance under the Quiet Skies Program, a federal initiative that monitored individuals deemed potential security risks despite not being formally designated as threats.
The Trump administration terminated Quiet Skies in June 2025, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which reported that the program cost taxpayers roughly $200 million annually.
In the committee statement, FBI Director Kash Patel said Crowder’s case is an example of federal surveillance drifting into political overreach.
“When a Catholic kindergarten teacher from Texas can be surveilled for more than two years simply for being in Washington, D.C., without entering the Capitol, without committing a crime,” Patel said, “we have crossed from legitimate investigation into political overreach.”
Paul credited Patel for cooperating in the declassification of the records and praised Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for ending the Quiet Skies program.
Paul said, “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.”
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