The FBI is changing tactics on the Capitol insurrection suspects, moving to build federal conspiracy and sedition cases that carry sentences of decades in prison.
Authorities are sifting through reams of evidence—including more than 200,000 digital tips gathered from social media, members of the public, confidential informants, local news and surveillance footage, according to court filings and people involved in the cases. In recent days, investigators also have started receiving nonpublic evidence gathered from more than 500 grand jury subpoenas and search warrants, officials said, bolstering efforts to gain a clearer picture of what happened on Jan. 6.
Prosecutors already have charged more than 150 people with federal crimes related to participating in the riot, and officials said Tuesday they expected the flood of cases to slow as authorities turn to what was happening behind the scenes.
“We are going to reach a plateau in the very near future,” the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Michael Sherwin, said, adding that investigators are increasingly focusing on “possible coordination among militia groups” and people from different states who “had a plan to travel here before the sixth and engage in criminal conduct.”
The sprawling investigation includes FBI agents who normally handle a range of other matters, including securities fraud, public corruption, drugs, and gangs, court filings show.
FBI field offices from Arizona to New York have fanned out to make arrests, search homes and interview witnesses, family members and associates. Homeland security agents and local law enforcement have also taken part in the investigation, according to the filings and people involved.
Current and former law-enforcement officials said the effort was comparable with some of the largest investigations in the FBI’s recent history, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the Boston Marathon attack. The result has been a rapid-fire series of criminal complaints, arrest and search warrants, with grand jury indictments and more arrests, including those involving additional assaults on police officers, expected later this week.
Officials said they expected little to change in the investigation as Biden appointees take over the Justice Department. “If the evidence is there, and we can identify someone, they’re going to be charged regardless of who is in the White House,” Mr. Sherwin said.
Five died amid the violence at the Capitol, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer and a 35-year-old military veteran who was shot by police. Three died while suffering medical emergencies.
Investigators’ next challenge will be taking a cascade of low-level criminal charges like unauthorized entry into the Capitol and using them as predicate offenses that allow agents and prosecutors to dig further in their attempt to build a broader case for conspiracy, law-enforcement officials said.
“The arrest is only the starting point,” said Richard M. Frankel, the former special agent in charge of the Newark, N.J., FBI field office. “Now they can go back and say, ‘Is this an organized effort to violate Congress, and do further criminal acts?’”
In other words, the terrorists are going to be facing the rest of their lives in federal prison, as it should be. There must be overwhelming and catastrophic consequences to these acts, and they have to end any notion that they will be allowed to happen again.
The commander of the D.C. National Guard said the Pentagon restricted his authority ahead of the riot at the U.S. Capitol, requiring higher-level sign-off to respond that cost time as the events that day spiraled out of control.
Local commanders typically have the power to take military action on their own to save lives or prevent significant property damage in an urgent situation when there isn’t enough time to obtain approval from headquarters.
But Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard, said the Pentagon essentially took that power and other authorities away from him ahead of the short-lived insurrection on Jan. 6. That meant he couldn’t immediately roll out troops when he received a panicked phone call from the Capitol Police chief warning that rioters were about to enter the U.S. Capitol.
“All military commanders normally have immediate response authority to protect property, life, and in my case, federal functions — federal property and life,” Walker said in an interview. “But in this instance I did not have that authority.”
Walker and former Army secretary Ryan D. McCarthy, along with other top officials, briefed the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday behind closed doors about the events, the beginning of what is likely to become a robust congressional inquiry into the preparations for a rally that devolved into a riot at the Capitol, resulting in five people dead and representing a significant security failure.
The military, which isn’t structured to be a first responder like law enforcement, took hours to arrive at the scene primarily because the Capitol Police and the District government hadn’t asked the D.C. Guard to prepare a contingency force for a riot. The Capitol Police chief also didn’t call Walker to tell him a request for Guard backup was imminent until about 25 minutes before rioters breached the Capitol.
But the restrictions the Pentagon placed on Walker also contributed to the delay. He needed to wait for approval from McCarthy and acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller before dispatching troops, even though some 40 soldiers were on standby as a quick reaction force. That standby force had been assembled in case the few hundred Guard members deployed that day on the District’s streets to assist police with traffic control and crowd management needed help, Walker said.
The Pentagon required the highest-level approval for any moves beyond that narrow mission, in part because its leaders had been lambasted for actions the D.C. Guard took during last June’s racial justice protests, including helicopters that flew low over demonstrators in D.C. Top officials concluded those maneuvers resulted from “fragmentary orders” that hadn’t received high-level approval and were looking to prevent a repeat of that situation.
“After June, the authorities were pulled back up to the secretary of defense’s office,” McCarthy said in comments to The Washington Post. “Any time we would employ troops and guardsmen in the city, you had to go through a rigorous process. As you recall, there were events in the summer that got a lot of attention, and that was part of this.”
The people that made the terrorist attack on the US Capitol three weeks ago possible weren't all just the seditious terrorists. They were US government officials working for Trump.
Homeland Security is taking al this seriously, seriously enough to issue a National Terrorist Advistory System warning.
Using a federal system designed to warn all Americans about terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland, the Department of Homeland Security has issued a warning that anger "fueled by false narratives," especially unfounded claims about the 2020 presidential election, could lead some inside the country to launch attacks in the coming weeks.
"Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence," according to a bulletin issued Wednesday through the DHS National Terrorist Advisory System -- or NTAS.
The system was last used to issue a public warning a year ago, when DHS issued a bulletin over potential retaliation by Iran for the U.S. assassination of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq days earlier. A year before that, DHS issued a bulletin through the same system to highlight the threat from foreign terrorist groups like ISIS or al-Qaida.
But over the past year, domestic terrorists "motivated by a range of issues motivated by a range of issues, including anger over COVID-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, and police use of force have plotted and on occasion carried out attacks against government facilities," and "long-standing racial and ethnic tension -- including opposition to immigration -- has driven [domestic terrorist] attacks," the bulletin issued Wednesday said.
"DHS is concerned these same drivers to violence will remain through early 2021 and some [domestic terrorists] may be emboldened by the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. to target elected officials and government facilities," the bulletin added.
In other words, DHS believes more domestic terrorist attacks from Trump supporters are coming.
So do I.
Be careful.
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