DOJ considers charging 200 more people 4 years after Jan. 6 Capitol attack
The Justice Department is considering charging up to 200 more people for their alleged involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, a report says.
The new figures released Monday on the 4-year anniversary of the incident include 60 people suspected of assaulting or impeding police officers, according to Politico.
President-elect Trump is set to be sworn in as the country’s next president in just two weeks. In December, Trump told NBC that he wanted to pardon the Jan. 6 rioters on the first day of his administration and said people on the Jan. 6 committee in Congress belonged in jail.
"I’m going to look at everything. We’ll look at individual cases," Trump said at the time. "But I’m going to be acting very quickly."
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Around 1,600 people so far have faced federal charges relating to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including more than 600 who allegedly assaulted or resisted police, Politico reported.
Nearly 200 of the defendants were charged with carrying a dangerous weapon on Capitol grounds and 153 were accused of destruction of government property – but the new figures released Monday are the first time the Justice Department has estimated how many cases are yet to be prosecuted, Politico added.
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The news outlet also reported that around 1,100 Jan. 6 defendants have been convicted and reached sentencing, but 300 of the already charged cases have not entered the trial stage yet.
"Over the past four years, our prosecutors, FBI agents, investigators, and analysts have conducted one of the most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in the Justice Department’s history," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Monday.
"They have analyzed massive amounts of physical and digital data, identified and arrested hundreds of people who took part in unlawful conduct that day, and initiated prosecutions and secured convictions across a wide range of criminal conduct. We have now charged more than 1,500 individuals for crimes that occurred on January 6, as well as in the days and weeks leading up to the attack," he continued.
"The public servants of the Justice Department have sought to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy with unrelenting integrity. They have conducted themselves in a manner that adheres to the rule of law and honors our obligation to protect the civil rights and civil liberties of everyone in this country," Garland added.
President Biden on Sunday was asked by reporters if he still thought Trump was a threat to democracy.
"We've got to get back to establishing basic democratic norms," Biden told reporters in the White House East Room. "I think what he did was a genuine threat to democracy. I'm hopeful that we are beyond that."
Fox News’ Sarah Rumpf-Whitten and Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.