Security Ramps Up For 2-Year Anniversary Of Insurrection

WASHINGTON, DC — In the two years since the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump, more than 900 people so far have been charged with crimes, a tally that grows weekly, and the House select committee investigating the insurrection has taken the extraordinary step of recommending that Trump and some of his allies also be criminally charged.

The violent siege on the Capitol two years ago Friday to try to stop the certification of electoral votes declaring Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election resulted in the deaths of five people during or soon after the attack, including two Capitol police officers and one rioter. About 140 police officers from the U.S. Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department were assaulted in the attack, according to the Justice Department.

It was the first time in U.S. history that the transfer of power from one administration to another was not peaceful. In a speech before rioters attacked the Capitol, Trump repeated the same claims he had been making in the two months since the election that it had been stolen, then urged his supporters to walk from the rally site on the National Mall to the Capitol.

The U.S. Capitol Police is ramping up security and monitoring online chatter about already permitted protests on the Capitol grounds to mark the two-year anniversary, CNN reported.

According to a Capitol Police intelligence memo reviewed by CNN, some of the protesters contend the government has unfairly prosecuted, while others warn the U.S. democracy was in peril the day of the riot. The Capitol Police intelligence unit is also monitoring activity at the Supreme Court related to a longshot petition alleging the 2020 election was fraudulent. Lower courts have previously dismissed the petition for various reasons, including that they lacked jurisdiction, CNN reported.

The White House said Thursday that Biden will mark the two-year anniversary of the insurrection by honoring 12 people with the Presidential Citizens Medal, the nation’s second-highest civilian honor, in a ceremony at the White House Friday. The 12 people chosen were involved in defending the Capitol and safeguarding the will of American voters in the 2020 presidential election, the White House said.

• Related: Biden To Award Citizens Medal To 12 On Jan. 6 Anniversary

In a blistering criticism of the insurrection last year, Biden did not mention Trump by name, but squarely blamed the “defeated president” for the attack he said raised global concerns about the future of American democracy.

The Case Against Trump

During its sweeping nearly 18-month investigation, the Jan. 6 committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained more than a million pages of documents before releasing its 814-page report last month.

The panel came to the unanimous conclusion that Trump coordinated a “conspiracy” on multiple levels, pressuring states, federal officials and lawmakers to try to overturn his defeat, and inspired a violent mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol and interrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s win.

Chairman Bernie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, called the final report a “roadmap to justice” for Trump, whose actions leading up to the insurrection were the nearly singular focus of the committee.

“Donald Trump lit that fire,” Thompson wrote in the committee’s final report. “But in the weeks beforehand, the kindling he ultimately ignited was amassed in plain sight.”

The committee’s criminal referral asks the Justice Department to consider charges against Trump related to inciting an insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and obstruction of an official proceeding. The referral is largely symbolic, and the Justice Department is under no obligation to comply with recommendations in the unprecedented referral.

Witnesses, who ranged from many of Trump’s closest aides to law enforcement officers to some of the rioters themselves, detailed Trump’s “premeditated” actions ahead of the attack and told the committee how his wide-ranging efforts to overturn his defeat directly influenced those who brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the months, weeks and days leading up to Jan. 6, “stop the steal” rallies built on the former president’s unsubstantiated accusations were held in Trump strongholds and swing states. The first was four days after the 2020 presidential election, on Nov. 7, 2020, at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, but other notable rallies were held in Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina.

From Jan. 5-7, 2021, Trump supporters staged 39 “stop the steal” protests in their state capitals, according to a report from the Bridging Divides Initiative, a project of Princeton University.

The Cases Against The Rioters

The attack on the Capitol promoted the most expansive federal law enforcement investigation in U.S. history. The FBI has offered a reward of up to $500,000 for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for placing pipe bombs in Washington on Jan. 5, 2021. The agency is still seeking the public’s help to identify people pictured in 1,433 photos taken the day of the insurrection.

Trials and other proceedings related to the insurrection have clogged Washington’s federal court, a building less than a mile from where the bloody insurrection unfolded two years ago. Judges accept guilty pleas and sentence rioters every day while also carving out room on their dockets for trials.

A surplus of self-incriminating videos and social media posts has made it difficult for riot suspects to present viable defenses, and the Justice Department’s prosecution record is nearly perfect.

Of the 538 cases that have been resolved through plea deals, trials, dismissals or the defendant’s death, only one person — New Mexico resident Matthew Martin — was acquitted of all charges in a bench trial when U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden concluded that it was reasonable for Martin to believe that outnumbered police officers allowed him and others to enter the Capitol through the Rotunda doors on Jan. 6.

That leaves about 400 unresolved cases at the outset of 2023. At least 140 riot defendants have their 2023 court dates scheduled.

The charges against the rioters range from misdemeanor charges against people who entered the Capitol but did not engage in any violence to seditious conspiracy charges against members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys extremist groups accused of violently plotting to stop the transfer of presidential power.

The Justice Department notched a high-stakes victory in November when a jury convicted Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers’ founder, and Kelly Meggs, the leader of the group’s Florida chapter, who were found guilty of seditious conspiracy.Three of their co-defendants were acquitted of the charge.

Four other individuals have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges, the most serious of those filed so far in the investigation.

Seditious conspiracy charges reflect the Justice Department’s belief that the Capitol breach was a grave threat to the operation of the U.S. government. Such charges have rarely been brought in the century and a half that the statute and its forerunners

Under the federal seditious conspiracy law, enacted after the American Civil War, charges are filed when two or more people plot to “overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the United States or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States. …”

The next major milestone is the sedition trial of Tarrio and four other members of the Proud Boys. Jury selection in the trial of the far-right extremist group started last month.

In other cases, an Ohio man who stole a coat rack from the Capitol testified that he was acting on orders from Trump when he stormed the Capitol. A New Jersey man described by prosecutors as a Nazi sympathizer claimed he didn’t know that Congress met at the Capitol. A retired New York Police Department officer testified that he was defending himself when he tackled a police officer and grabbed his gas mask outside the Capitol.

Those defenses fell flat. Jurors unanimously convicted all three men of every charge in their respective indictments.

Federal juries have convicted at least 22 people of Jan. 6 charges. Judges have convicted an additional 24 riot defendants after hearing and deciding cases without a jury.

Nearly 500 people have pleaded guilty to riot-related charges, typically hoping that cooperating could lead to a lighter punishment.

Oath Keepers And Proud Boys

The first person to plead guilty to a Jan. 6-related crime was Jon Ryan Schaffer, an Indiana musician who joined the Oath Keepers. Schaffer was one of at least eight Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty before Rhodes went to trial.

The Justice Department also cut plea deals with several Proud Boys members, securing their cooperation to build a case against former national leader Enrique Tarrio and other top members of the group. A New York man, Matthew Greene, was the first Proud Boys member to plead guilty to conspiring with others to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote.

About three-quarters of those who made deals with the Justice Department pleaded guilty to misdemeanors in which the maximum sentence was either six months or one year behind bars. More than 100 of them have pleaded guilty to felony charges punishable by longer prison terms.

At least 362 riot defendants were sentenced by the end of 2022. Roughly 200 of them have received terms of imprisonment ranging from seven days to 10 years. Prosecutors had recommended a jail or prison sentence in approximately 300 of those 362 cases.

Retired New York Police Department Officer Thomas Webster has received the longest prison sentence. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who sentenced Webster to a decade in prison, also presided over the first Oath Keepers sedition trial and will sentence Rhodes and Rhodes’ convicted associates.

Webster is one of 34 riot defendants who has received a prison sentence of at least three years. More than half of them, including Webster, assaulted police officers at the Capitol.

The riot resulted in more than $2.7 million in damage. So far, judges have ordered roughly 350 convicted rioters to collectively pay nearly $280,00 in restitution. More than 100 rioters have been ordered to pay over $241,000 in total fines.

Judges also have ordered dozens of rioters to serve terms of home detention ranging from two weeks to one year — usually instead of jail time — and to collectively perform more than 14,000 hours of community service.

What’s Next

As the federal criminal cases continue, the FBI is continuing to ask the public’s help in finding others who participated in the attack, which cell phone technology made one of the most documented crimes in U.S. history. Many of the Justice Department’s cases have been built on video footage of the attack, social media posts, phone location data and tips from the public, and federal prosecutors say hundreds more cases could be filed.

Investigators have used facial recognition software, license plate readers and other high-tech tools to track down some suspects. Networks of online sleuths have helped the FBI identify rioters based on digital clues.

Among those still on the lam: the person who put two explosives outside the offices of the Republican and Democratic national committees before the riot. The FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Metropolitan Police Department are offering a $500,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

Authorities have shared a staggering amount of evidence with defense lawyers — more than nine terabytes of information that would take over 100 days to view. The shared files include thousands of hours of surveillance footage from the Capitol and hundreds of hours of bodycam videos from police officers who tried to hold off the mob.

The Jan. 6 attack was an “assault on our democracy,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Wednesday.

“And we remain committed to doing everything in our power to prevent this from ever happening again,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.