Almost two years after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the sprawling federal investigation into the riot continues at an \u201cunprecedented speed and scale,\u201d with more than 950 people arrested, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday.
\nThat number represents less than half of an estimated 2,000 to 2,500 supporters of former President Donald Trump believed to have breached the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
\nBut Garland, the nation\u2019s chief law enforcement officer, said the Justice Department remained determined to bring every lawbreaker to justice.
\n\u201cWe remain committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for the January 6 assault on our democracy,\u201d Garland said in a statement. \u201cAnd we remain committed to doing everything in our power to prevent this from ever happening again.\u201d
\nDavid Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office that has been leading the federal investigation, indicated the probe could take years.
\n\u201cIn the months and years to come, the FBI Washington Field Office will continue to partner with U.S. attorney\u2019s offices across the country to bring to justice those who attempted to use violence to substitute their will over the will of the people,\u201d Sundberg said in a statement.
\nWhile most of those arrested so far in connection with the January 6 attack have faced misdemeanor charges such as entering or remaining in a restricted federal building, others have been prosecuted for more serious crimes.
\nAmong them are Stewart Rhodes, founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government militia, and Kelly Meggs, leader of the group\u2019s Florida chapter. Both were found guilty of seditious conspiracy in November.
\nThe charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
\nSeparately, five members of the Proud Boys extremist group, including its chairman, Enrique Tarrio, are on trial on seditious conspiracy charges in federal court in Washington.
\nProsecutors say the two pro-Trump groups mobilized their members to storm the Capitol.
\nJordan Strauss, a former federal prosecutor, said the Justice Department appears to be taking \u201cvery close to a zero-tolerance approach\u201d to prosecuting the perpetrators of the January 6 attack.
\n\u201cThey seem to be going after 100 percent of those who they believe committed crimes,\u201d said Strauss, a managing director at Kroll, a corporate investigation and risk consulting firm.
\nIn its final report, the congressional committee investigating the circumstances leading up to January 6 placed the blame for the attack on Trump, accusing the former president of engaging in a \u201cmulti-part plan\u201d to overturn the result of the presidential election.
\nTrump slammed the report as a \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Voanews<\/p>\n
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Almost two years after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the sprawling federal investigation into the riot continues at an \u201cunprecedented speed and scale,\u201d with more than 950 people arrested, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday. That number represents less than half of an estimated 2,000 to 2,500 supporters of former […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3539,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3677,1840,1226,1386,3676,419,1481,2033,1227],"class_list":["post-3538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-950-arrests","tag-assault","tag-attack","tag-capitol","tag-charges","tag-fbi","tag-january","tag-violence","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3540,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538\/revisions\/3540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}