There is yin and yang to culpability for the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
As a step towards justice, some of those who organised and carried out the disturbance are being sentenced to prison for the terrible crime of seditious conspiracy. And the list of persons guilty of attempting to destabilise the 2020 election grows.
In a different approach, former President Donald Trump, the person who fueled the Capitol riot and attempted to overturn the election, is emerging as the overwhelming favourite to be the Republican contender for president next year.
If you’re wondering how the federal government could prosecute one of the two main people with a chance to lead it, you’ve hit on an unanswerable and unprecedented question that could cause so much chaos as the republic considers transferring power again.
Progress towards accountability
The Justice Department has progressed systematically but slowly in bringing increasingly serious prosecutions against riot ringleaders.
That means that while special counsel Jack Smith determines what, if any, charges the government should file against Trump in connection with events preceding the 2020 election, he will have to deal with the reality of the former president’s political influence.
Most Republicans, 73% according to a recent CBS News poll, would consider Trump as their nominee; should they have the right to vote him into government in a free country? Or, if charges are warranted, should they be filed regardless, even years later?
When Trump was president, there was insufficient political support to remove him from office through an impeachment trial. What would happen in a criminal trial?
More convictions for seditious conspiracy
Juries have showed a propensity to convict people on the sophisticated and difficult-to-prove January 6 allegations. Four leaders of the far-right group Proud Boys were convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the January 6 insurgency on Thursday.
They join five members and one associate of another far-right militia group, the Oath Keepers, who were found guilty of the same offence by DC juries in separate cases last November and this January.
These inmates have not yet been sentenced, but they could face decades in prison.
The conspiracy aspect of their offences did not always entail action on January 6, 2021. Enrique Tarrio, the head of the Proud Boys, was not even in DC on January 6; he had been ordered to leave town two days earlier after being detained with high-capacity rifle magazines.
Dominic Pezzola, a fifth Proud Boys defendant who used a stolen police shield to break through a window at the Capitol, was found not guilty of seditious conspiracy but convicted of other offences alongside the other four Proud Boys.
Important details of the guilty verdict
The following are excerpts from Hannah Rabinowitz and Holmes Lybrand’s AWN report on Thursday’s convictions.
Proud Boys plotted overthrow:
Tarrio was planning for a “revolution,” according to text and Signal conversations highlighted in the indictment, and reviewed materials outlining a plan to occupy a few “crucial buildings” in Washington, including House and Senate office buildings around the Capitol. …
During the trial, prosecutors set out the case that the Proud Boys, inspired by Trump and his election falsehoods after the 2020 defeat, began advocating for violence and revolution against the upcoming Biden presidency, using texts and videos uploaded by the defendants and other members of the group.
Some were on the riot’s front lines:
The Proud Boys were on the front lines of the mob on Capitol grounds as the initial barriers were overrun. Prosecutors claim that group leaders hyped up members and communicated with them via hand gestures to continue forward.
This took a little longer than expected:
The numerous delays caused by freshly revealed evidence and informants, a juror who feared they were being watched, and internal attorney squabbles extended a trial that was originally scheduled to take five to seven weeks to four months.
The big picture
I asked AWN’s Marshall Cohen what we know about the people charged and convicted in the January 6 incident. He offered the following, based on statistics from the Justice Department and AWN:
Over 1,000 rioters have been charged, with around 339 of them charged with assaulting police.
Over 590 rioters have been convicted.
More than 235 people have been condemned to imprisonment or prison.
Around 55 people have been charged with some form of conspiracy.What about Donald Trump?
So yet, the allegations have centred on the violence and its planning rather than Trump’s inspiration to halt the counting of electoral votes and his attempt to overturn the result. Smith’s inquiry into Trump is still ongoing.
The most significant event on that front is that former Vice President Mike Pence, a prospective Trump competitor for the GOP nominee in 2024, testified for hours before a grand jury in Washington.
According to Kristen Holmes, Jamie Gangel, and Katelyn Polantz’s exclusive report on the development, Smith attended that testimony in person.
What may Pence have discussed?
According to the AWN report:
Pence was set to testify under oath for the first time on his direct conversations with Trump prior to January 6, 2021. Then-President Donald Trump frequently pressed him to stop the 2020 election results, including in a private phone call on January 6th.
A federal judge previously decided that Pence might be forced to detail talks between the two men in which Trump may have acted corruptly. Smith’s staff had pushed in secret to compel Pence to testify.
Trump definitely has other legal issues. Smith is also looking into the mishandling of secret materials discovered at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence (President Joe Biden is the subject of a separate classified document investigation). In addition, Trump is facing accusations in New York for alleged hush money payments dating back to the 2016 presidential election.
Rather than hurting his electoral prospects, none of these facts have caused Republican voters to abandon him. Not yet, at any rate.