Attorney General Merrick Garland indicated the Justice Department was prioritizing prosecutions related to the siege of the Capitol over those tied to last summer’s riots because the events of Jan. 6 were “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.”
Garland appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday and revealed that the Justice Department had made more than 430 arrests tied to the Capitol riot so far, which he said would continue to grow. At the same time, in a different hearing, former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who served in the role during the final month of President Donald Trump’s presidency, also touted the Capitol riot investigations that had begun under his watch.
Republicans have repeatedly raised concerns that the Justice Department has not put the same effort into prosecutions tied to last summer’s violence as it has into the storming of the Capitol earlier this year.
Garland was questioned by the Senate committee’s vice chairman, Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, who contended that the definition of “domestic terrorism” should apply both to the storming of the Capitol and last summer’s violent riots.
“That was the case with the events of January the 6th, and the individuals who committed those acts should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. I believe that,” he said. “At the same time, sir, I’m trying to understand the difference between those acts and the ones perpetuated last summer by groups like antifa and others that rioted, vandalized, and frankly terrorized cities like Portland, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C.”
The Republican asked the Biden attorney general to pursue the different cases with “equal vigor” and urged against “selectively prosecuting” criminals.
“The role of the Justice Department is to investigate and prosecute violations of the criminal law, regardless of ideology. … We don’t care what the ideology is. Violations of the law are pursued and prosecuted,” Garland said. However, he also said, “I think it is fair to say that, in my career as a judge and in law enforcement, I have not seen a more dangerous threat to democracy than the invasion of the Capitol. This was an attempt by some — and I want to be very careful to not ascribe it to all, because every case is individually decided — but there was an attempt to interfere with a fundamental element of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. And if there has to be a hierarchy of things that we prioritize, this would be the one that we prioritize, because it is the most dangerous threat to our democracy.”
Garland added: “But that does not mean that we don’t focus on other threats and we don’t focus on other crimes — we do — and we don’t care about the ideology behind them.”
Shelby then asked: “Is rioting and pilfering and all of this in our cities where it breaks the law — is that subject to prosecution?”
The attorney general said: “Of course. Anything that breaks the law is subject to prosecution. It may not be subject to federal prosecution — there has to be a federal crime involved — but if it breaks the law, of course, it is subject to prosecution.”
Shelby had expounded upon his argument during his opening remarks, in which he brought up both the Capitol riot as well as crimes conducted by antifa and other groups in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody, saying, “I believe the overwhelming majority of Americans watched the events of January the 6th with shock and horror. I also believe that just as many watched the endless string of riots in cities across America last summer with the same emotions.”
Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, echoed some of this during her own questioning of Garland and asked him: “What resources has the department dedicated to identifying and prosecuting the individuals responsible for the violent acts last summer that were aimed at institutions like courthouses and police stations?”
The Biden attorney general did not have too many details.
“As you might expect, I know more about the resources we’re putting into January 6th, because most of those resources have been put in on my watch during the time I’ve been here. I wasn’t the attorney general nor in the Department of Justice in the summer, so I’m not completely familiar with the resources that were put in in that period,” Garland said. “But the U.S. attorney’s offices both in the other Portland and in Minneapolis are continuing to work those cases, as are the FBI field offices in both of those cases, and I have not heard any suggestion that insufficient resources are available for those continuing prosecutions.”
During his own opening remarks, Garland compared the Capitol riot to the Oklahoma City bombing carried out by Timothy McVeigh, which killed 168 people and wounded hundreds more. He also compared the storming of the Capitol to the case against the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who killed three people and injured 23 more during a nationwide mail bomb spree from 1978 to 1995. Garland said that “the Justice Department is once again engaged in a complex and resource-intensive investigation, one of the largest in our history, the investigation of the heinous attack on the United States Capitol on January 6th.”
The Justice Department investigation, led by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., has often pointed to violence conducted against Capitol police officers by rioters and has focused on actions taken by members of groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
The medical examiner’s office told the Washington Examiner last month that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick’s “cause of death” was “acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis” and that the “manner of death” was “natural.”
The Capitol Police initially announced that Sicknick, a 42-year-old who joined the agency in 2008, died on Jan. 7, one day after rioters broke into the Capitol as lawmakers counted electoral votes to affirm now-President Joe Biden‘s victory over former President Donald Trump.
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The Justice Department announced in April that it would not pursue charges against the U.S. Capitol Police officer who fatally shot 35-year-old Air Force veteran and Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt inside the Capitol during the riot, determining there was “insufficient evidence” to support a criminal prosecution.
The person who planted pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee buildings the night before the Capitol riot has still not been identified.
