Without wasting time, on January 6, federal agents got to work searching social networks, analyzing videos and verifying anonymous reports to clarify responsibilities after the assault on Capitol, the temple of American democracy.
(Read here: Trump cancels the anniversary press conference on the assault on the Capitol)
This “huge,” “massive” work is “one of the largest investigations in the history of the FBI,” says Lorenzo Vidino, director of the “Program on Extremism” at George Washington University.
(Also: Assault on the Capitol: A Year of America’s Worst Democratic Crisis)
A list of names that gets longer every day
These efforts made it possible, in almost a year, to arrest and accuse more than 725 supporters of the former president. Donald trump that, after having heard him denounce that the elections had been stolen, they broke into the headquarters of Congress when the congressmen certified the victory of Joe biden.
Names are added to the list almost every day: the federal police initially named 800 participants but now believe that at least 2,000 people were “involved in the siege.”
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Most of the defendants are white men
The defendants are mainly men (87 percent), white, with an average age of 39 years, “higher than the usual age for extremists,” says Vidino, whose research center compiles all the prosecutions that were carried out. .
They come from all over the country and have varied socioeconomic profiles (lawyer, landscaper, real estate agent, etc.) but people with military experience and bankruptcy abound.
Among them are far-right militants, conspirators but also simple supporters of Donald Trump who are convinced of the need to wage a post-election crusade.
Offenses and plea agreements
Most of those involved, who apparently were content to tour the building, are on trial for minor offenses, such as violation of an entry ban or disturbing public order.
Prosecutors appear to be trying them quickly through a plea agreement: some 165 people have already availed themselves of this system and some 50 sentences have been handed down.
Most are mild: a young man, who admitted to stealing a beer in the office of Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, was sentenced to 20 days in prison, which he will serve on weekends to keep his job.
But a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence was imposed on 34-year-old Jacob Chansley, who with his buffalo horn headdress became one of the iconic faces of the assault.
His lawyer Al Watkins deplores these differences, which, according to him, send “the wrong message.” “It does not seem fair to those who consider themselves political prisoners” and there is a risk of reinforcing them in their positions, he told AFP.
(Also: Indictment against Trump’s adviser stirs up investigations into assault on Capitol Hill)
The minority accused of having committed violent acts
The harshest penalties were known recently and fell on the approximately 225 people accused of having committed violent acts, especially against the Capitol police officers.
Robert Palmer, 54, has just been sentenced to five years in prison for throwing boards and a fire extinguisher, among other things, at officers. In this group, some 40 people are also being tried for “criminal association”, which implies having planned the attack.
This charge, the most serious, is aimed in particular at members of the extreme right-wing groups Proud Boys, Oaths Keepers or Three Percenters.
These defendants, some of whom have been in preventive detention for months, will likely be tried by popular juries. The first trial could be held in February.
A 30-year-old New Yorker, member of the Proud Boys, has just reached an agreement with the prosecution, with which he will collaborate, in exchange for a reduced sentence. No one has yet been charged with “sedition” or “insurrection,” charges that are difficult to prove.
According to Vidino, prosecutors “try to be as imaginative as they can within a restrictive legal framework.”
In the United States, recalls the expert, foreign extremist groups can be investigated but not American organizations with a radical and violent ideology.
(Also read: The ‘shaman’ of the assault on the Capitol is sentenced to 41 months in prison)
It remains to determine who the instigators were
It remains to be determined who, of those who did not go to the scene, incited or orchestrated the assault. For now the prosecutors have left it to the congressmen to investigate.
Although Republican senators allowed Trump to be acquitted of impeachment in February, the former president is not out of the woods.
A House inquiry committee is trying to figure out what role Trump and his associates have played. If you can gather evidence to charge you, prosecutors could use it. Then a new page of this extensive research could open.
AFP
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