The Department of Justice (DOJ) is gearing up to prosecute up to 1,000 more people on charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, according to a letter from a U.S. attorney obtained by Bloomberg.
United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves sent a one-page letter to Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court Beryl Howell on Oct. 28, estimating cases could be filed for between 700 and 1,200 additional defendants as the department was already near making its 900th arrest, Bloomberg reported. Nearly 1,000 arrests have been made as of March 6., including 919 defendants who have been charged with entering a restricted federal building or grounds and 326 charged with “assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees,” according to the DOJ.
“We expect the pace of bringing new cases will increase, in an orderly fashion, over the course of the next few months,” Graves told Howell, according to Bloomberg. Graves noted that predicting future cases is “incredibly difficult” given the “nature and the complexity of the investigation,” adding at the end that estimates may change as the office evaluates “changing resources and circumstances.”
The U.S. attorney’s office spokesperson Patricia Hartman told Bloomberg the office would only comment on Jan. 6 cases through official filings. (RELATED: FBI Shielded Identities Of Undercover Assets Who May Have Been Inside Capitol On Jan. 6, Whistleblower Says)
Supporters of US President Donald Trump, including Jake Angeli (C), a QAnon supporter known for his painted face and horned hat, enter the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
The rising cases have clogged the court docket and strained resources at the federal public defender’s office and US attorney’s office, according to Bloomberg. Attorney General Merrick Garland called it “one of the largest, most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history” in a Jan 4., 2023 statement marking 24 months since the day.
Last month, FBI whistleblower George Hill testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, telling them that the FBI’s Washington Field Office requested the Boston Field Office open cases into each of 140 individuals who took a bus from Massachusetts to D.C. on Jan 6, despite the Washington office’s refusal to turn over video evidence proving those individuals were inside the Capitol. The Washington Office defended its decision by appealing to a need to “protect” the identity of potential undercover officers or confidential human sources on the videos, Hill said.
Another whistleblower, FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle of the Kansas City field office, also told the committee that he had been told to divide a single domestic terrorism case into “four different cases” to inflate the number.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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