Exactly a year ago, a violent mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters forced their way past police barricades lined with officers and into the US Capitol building, demanding to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
Make America Great Again fans fueled by Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’ rally on January 6, 2020, stormed the Capitol, and the breach caused Congress to pause its session certifying Joe Biden as president.
Since last January, federal law enforcement officials have charged over 700 people with federal crimes stemming from the Capitol riot, and arrests continue to be made.
More than 600 individuals have been accused of entering or remaining in the restricted Capitol grounds, the most common crime alleged so far. The charge carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine.
Prosecutors have charged hundreds of defendants with other, lower-level counts of illegal picketing and disorderly or disruptive conduct on Capitol grounds. Over 30 defendants have also been charged with theft of government property, according to the US Attorney’s office.
At least 225 defendants have been charged with assaulting, impeding, or resisting law enforcement during the riot, including over 75 who are accused of using a deadly or dangerous weapon against officers like chemical irritants, flagpoles and even a tomahawk axe, according to CBS News.
There are an additional 250 people were captured on video assaulting police at the Capitol who are still yet to be fully identified and apprehended by the FBI. Another 100 people are being pursued for other crimes related to the riot.
The FBI has posted 16 videos of individuals wanted for violent assaults, and an additional video of two people wanted for assaulting members of the media.
No one has been charged with sedition, or attempting to overthrow the government.
Federal prosecutors want the arrests and convictions of those responsible for the attack to act as a deterrent against future attempts to overthrow democracy. But despite the hundreds of charges, over 150 guilty pleas and continued investigation into the events, the infamous day is remembered differently across party lines.
FBI agents and investigative analysts have been poring over thousands of hours of surveillance video, going second by second in each video to try to capture clear images of people who attacked officers inside the Capitol.
‘This investigation takes time because it is a lot of, lot of work, a lot of painstaking work that they look at the video kind of frame by frame,’ stated Steven D’Antuono, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s field office in Washington, DC.
Those who committed some of the most serious crimes last January 6, like assaulting police or carrying a weapon into the Capitol, may be sentenced to three or four years in prison. First-time offenders of lesser crimes may be able to argue for no prison time at all.
Shan Wu, a former federal prosecutor in Washington, told BuzzFeed News that he expected people with the least exposure – the ‘let’s just get this over with’ defendants with no criminal history facing low-level charges — to take deals early.
Wu said he also expects defendants facing more serious charges who have information to offer prosecutors, will do so in exchange for more leniency.
While many are still waiting to be sentenced, those who have already have, generally received lenient sentences, according to a Newsweek analysis.
Over half of the 71 Capitol rioters who were sentenced in 2021 avoided jail time, but most of those defendants faced a maximum sentencing of six months.
The riot ‘looked awful. It was awful’, Jay Town, a former US attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, told the Washington Post.
‘But the criminal penalties associated with most of the offenses will not likely result in lengthy prison terms, especially if these individuals plead guilty and cooperate. And that’s how our system is supposed to work,’ Town said.
In some cases, sentencing has been more lenient, but one US District Judge, Tanya Chutkan, has given people who stormed the Capitol more prison time than prosecutors sought.
Chutkan has said that even people who were not violent should face consequences for joining the unprecedented assault on US democracy.
‘There have to be consequences for participating in an attempted violent overthrow of the government, beyond sitting at home,’ Chutkan said at one of the hearings.
Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the federal court in Washington, has also suggested prosecutors were being too lenient in allowing some defendants to plead guilty to misdemeanor offenses. Howell told the Guardian that ‘the government has essentially tied the sentencing judge’s hands’.
‘No wonder parts of this public are confused about whether what happened on 6 January at the Capitol was simply a petty offense of trespassing, with some disorderliness, or was shocking criminal conduct that posed a grave threat to our democratic norms,’ Howell said.
After January 6, there was bipartisan support for prosecuting rioters, but a Pew Research Center study found the number of Republicans who believe it is important to hold those responsible legally liable for their actions significantly declined over the course of the year.
Recent political polls highlighted the discrepancy, split between party lines.
A Quinnipiac poll found that 93% of Democrats considered it an attack on the government, but only 29% of Republicans agreed. A poll by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 4 in 10 Republicans recall the attack – in which five people died – as violent, while 9 in 10 Democrats do.
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