WASHINGTON — The Justice Department plans to focus on arresting the “most egregious” Jan. 6 rioters — particularly those who committed felony assaults on law enforcement officers but have not yet been arrested — in the remaining 72 days before President-elect Donald Trump is back in the White House, a law enforcement official told NBC News this week.
Trump is expected to shut down the years-long investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and has said he would “absolutely” pardon some, if not all, of his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol that day, labeling them “warriors,” “unbelievable patriots,” political prisoners and “hostages.” A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on which rioters Trump would consider pardoning, though the campaign previously said that he would pardon Jan. 6 defendants on a “case-by-case basis when he is back in the White House.”
Given Trump’s stunning election victory, federal prosecutors in the Justice Department’s Capitol Siege Section received guidance this week about how to proceed in pending Jan. 6 cases, NBC News has learned, including a directive to oppose any Jan. 6 defendant’s requests for delays. Prosecutors are instructed to argue that there is a societal interest in the quick administration of justice and these cases should be handled in the normal order.
As for new arrests, the law enforcement official said, prosecutors will “focus on the most egregious conduct and cases until the end of the administration.” There are unlikely to be any further arrests of misdemeanor Jan. 6 defendants — such as those who entered the Capitol but did not assault law enforcement — unless a judge already signed off on those cases, but felony assault cases will proceed, the official said.
Online sleuths who have aided the FBI in hundreds of arrests of Capitol rioters told NBC News they have identified and submitted evidence to the bureau on 75 peope who are currently featured on the FBI’s Capitol Violence webpage and labeled as wanted for assault on a federal officer or for assault on media, both felonies.
Federal officials would have to pick up the pace to get just those cases over the finish line before Trump walks through the lower west tunnel — where his supporters fought law enforcement in a battle multiple officers described as “medieval” — to take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025.
“Just over 1 per day,” one of the online “sedition hunters” who has dedicated hours of their life to finding the Trump supporters who brutally assaulted law enforcement officers that day, told NBC News. “Place your bets!”
“We didn’t spend the last four years tracking these criminals down just to have dozens of them avoid prosecution because half of the country are f—ing morons,” another of the online sleuths said. “Our work continues, as should the DOJ’s.”
Existing cases against Jan. 6 defendants are expected to continue with additional trials, sentencing hearings and plea agreement hearings scheduled to take place next week.
The FBI has arrested over 1,560 Jan. 6 defendants so far. Prosecutors have secured more than 1,100 convictions and more than 600 defendants have received sentences of incarceration ranging from days in jail to 22 years in federal prison.
This week, a rioter who assaulted law enforcement officers and smashed in the windows to the House Speaker’s Lobby just before a fellow rioter was shot — and then became the target of a conspiracy theory suggesting he was a federal informant — was sentenced to eight years in federal prison.
A former assistant U.S. attorney in the Justice Department’s Capitol Siege Section told NBC News this week that prosecutors are proud of the work they’ve done, but understandably nervous about the future and demoralized. Many prosecutors got involved in these cases because of their desire to uphold the rule of law and to defend democracy, the former assistant U.S. attorney said, but the cases became about vindicating the victims, who are primarily police officers.
“You spend any amount of time understanding what hell the police officers went through and watching the body-worn cameras where you stand in their shoes and you see people physically assaulting them and taking cheap shots at them and hitting them from behind, and using racial slurs against them, for hours and hours as they stood there and tried to protect the Capitol and people inside it, and the cases become about the victims,” he said. “So the idea that people who committed those crimes against those victims, people who assaulted those officers, would be pardoned, we just really hope people are thinking twice before doing that.”
The prospect of presidential pardons for people who assaulted law enforcement is “pretty demoralizing,” the former assistant U.S. attorney said.
“The idea that the most powerful person in the country says it’s okay, it’s okay to the person who sprayed them with bear spray, or hit them with a hockey stick, or drag them down steps, or, in the case of Michael Fanone, tased them in the neck and caused them to have a heart attack, or, in the case of Daniel Hodges, trap them in between doors and continue to squeeze them in between doors while they while Hodges was screaming for his life, that part of it is, it’s so wretched,” he said.
Prosecutors are extraordinarily proud of the work they’ve done and take solace in the notion that inside courtrooms — where facts, not political rhetoric, control the outcome of jury trials — American citizens who faced down the real evidence did the right thing, the former prosecutor said.
“The evidence is overwhelming, and the testimony of the officers was overwhelming,” he said. “Time and time and time again, when people are confronted with the evidence, it points in the same direction.”
Former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, an immigrant from the Dominican Republican and military veteran who wrote a book about his experience coming to America, learning English, serving in the military and then being repeatedly assaulted by his fellow Americans at the Capitol on Jan. 6, continues to attend sentencing hearings for the criminals who assaulted him. His injuries from the attack forced him to retire in 2022; he’s in his mid-40s.
Gonell, who campaigned on behalf of Kamala Harris, said he won’t let the story of Jan. 6 fade away, even after Trump takes office.
“Whether he pardons them or not, that doesn’t take away what they did and what I went through,” Gonell said. “They — they cannot erase that history.”
“If you remove Trump’s name out of the equation, and if you remove who they were supporting, would people who voted for him, would they be okay with what happened? Would they be supportive of me?” Gonell asked. “And that’s the question, it creates a moral injury.”
“It’s not a good feeling,” he continued, “when you feel like nobody cares about what happened that day.”
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