Republican officials, candidates and pundits have spent nearly four years trying to rewrite the story of the Jan. 6 attack, often in contradictory ways. Indeed, prominent GOP voices went from telling the public that the 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol was a terrible event that should be blamed on Antifa to later asking Americans to believe the riot was a laudable event committed by great patriots.

As the anniversary of the insurrectionist violence approaches, it’s striking to see some in the party continue to rewrite recent history in ways that are literally unbelievable. Take, for example, the line Rep. Eric Burlison presented on Newsmax on Tuesday. The Missouri Republican said:

I think we truly had some very disturbing things happen with the FBI and their involvement. They created many entrapment scenarios on American citizens who just simply were patriotic and wanted to express their First Amendment rights. Instead they were enticed and encouraged to, you know, do things that they didn’t even know might be illegal.

The problem with this bizarre line isn’t just that the GOP congressman has no evidence to support his claims. The problem is made worse by Burlison’s timing.

Just a couple of weeks before the Republican’s on-air comments, the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, unveiled the detailed findings of a four-year investigation, which concluded that while there were FBI informants at the Capitol, no FBI officials were responsible for instigating the attack.

Indeed, the report was devastating to Jan. 6 conspiracy theorists on and off Capitol Hill. To be sure, we already knew — from congressional investigations and multiple federal court cases — that the theories were baseless, but to the extent that there were still any lingering doubts, the Justice Department’s inspector general erased them in unambiguous detail.

For some Republicans — including Donald Trump — it was critically important that Horowitz confirmed that the Jan. 6 mob included some who were confidential FBI informants. But we already knew this. Some even testified during Jan. 6 criminal cases. The report’s confirmation of this detail didn’t advance our understanding of the broader events in any way.

What actually mattered was the degree to which the inspector general took a sledgehammer to the right’s conspiracy theory that the FBI was somehow responsible for creating the attack and entrapping Trump’s poor, unsuspecting supporters. Horowitz’s report discredited this misguided idea once and for all. (The same findings made clear that there were no undercover FBI employees at the Capitol, either.)

Two weeks after these findings reached the public, Burlison — a member of the House Oversight Committee — effectively pretended that the inspector general’s findings didn’t exist. Indeed, the congressman simply repeated the same discredited talking points, as if the absurdities about federal law enforcement still had merit, and Jan. 6 rioters — many of whom are in prison after pleading guilty — deserve to be seen as victims of underhanded FBI tactics.

That was a ridiculous line when far-right conspiracy theorists concocted the idea months ago, and it’s even worse now.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.