Six months since a terroristic mob invaded the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from approving President Biden‘s electoral victory, the Justice Department has reportedly arrested more than 500 people, received guilty pleas from more than 12, including two members of the Oath Keepers militia who admitted to conspiracy charges and sentenced an Indiana Woman for trespassing in the Capitol.
According to The Week, the FBI is still searching for about 300 more rioters and other Jan. 6 suspects, including a suspect who placed pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic national committees the night prior.
According to The Associated Press, the first wave of arrests were described as “the easy targets,” the rioters who video-recorded themselves, posted to social media and were also captured by news broadcasters covering the live act of them breaking into and defiling the Capitol.
Friends and family have reported other rioters, and amateur groups of “sedition hunters” have combed through photos and other records to locate other participants. The “sedition hunters” forwarded tips to the FBI, but federal agents have to obtain concrete evidence.
“Justice Department officials say arresting everyone involved in the insurrection remains a top priority,” AP reports, but “the struggle reflects the massive scale of the investigation and the grueling work still ahead for authorities in the face of an increasing effort by some Republican lawmakers to rewrite what happened that day.”
The New York Times reportedly spent six months piecing together the riot from police footage along with audio and cellphone video. This resulted in a 40-minute video investigation that clearly presents that the mob was “violent, less than spontaneous, ignited by well-organized groups that came prepared, and had many frightening near-misses with lawmakers.”
The FBI was reportedly assigned the difficult task of locating the participants because when sufficient assistance finally arrived on the scene to help the under-prepared and overwhelmed police on Jan. 6, law enforcement agencies’ main focus was clearing the Capitol over arresting insurgents.
Nonetheless, “they will find them,” Robert Anderson Jr., former executive assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, reportedly told the AP. “I don’t care how long it takes. If they are looking for them, they will find them.”
