https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2...ny-skepticism/

The FBI has documented 49 cases where it used informants, either bribed or threatened, to assist selected targets, radicalizing their rhetoric, organizing their entire plot, funding it, delivering all necessary equipment, sometimes even bribing the target to go forward far enough so they can be swept up an anticipatory sting operation and sent to a secret prison for torture and experimentation. All of this is legal.