The FBI has found little evidence that the Capitol riot was a planned and coordinated effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a new report.
The report from Reuters cites “four current and former law enforcement officials” who are allegedly either directly involved in or briefed on the sweeping Capitol riot investigations, and it states that the bureau “has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result.”
The FBI “at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump,” according to the outlet. It also reported that “FBI investigators did find that cells of protesters, including followers of the far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys groups, had aimed to break into the Capitol. But they found no evidence that the groups had serious plans about what to do if they made it inside.”
Senior lawmakers have reportedly been briefed in detail of the results of the FBI’s investigation.
One source said there has been little to no recent talk at the higher levels of the Justice Department about filing charges in the realm of seditious conspiracy and that racketeering charges have also been decided against. The outlet said “law enforcement sources” told them no charges related to an individual or group playing “a central role in organizing or leading the riot” appear to be pending.
The Justice Department said earlier this month that more than 570 defendants have been arrested in the Capitol riot investigations being led by the U.S. attorney’s office in the District of Columbia and that at least 175 defendants have been charged with “assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees,” including more than 55 defendants charged with “using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.” The DOJ says that approximately 80 Capitol Police officers and 60 Metropolitan Police Department officers were assaulted during the riot.
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Prosecutors said that “at least 240 defendants have been charged with corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, or attempting to do so,” and an estimated 40 defendants have been hit with conspiracy charges related to conspiring to obstruct a congressional proceeding and/or to obstruct or injure an officer. Many of the defendants hit with conspiracy charges have been members of the right-wing Oath Keepers militia-style group or the Proud Boys organization.
A “former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation” told Reuters: “Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases. Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”
An FBI spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that “we have no comment on the ongoing investigation and would refer you to the court documents in the January 6 cases.”
Michael Sherwin, the now-former acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told 60 Minutes in March that authorities were investigating Trump’s potential criminal liability and that he also believed the evidence existed to file sedition charges against some of those involved in the Capitol riot, both things he had been hinting at since January. No such charges have ever been filed.
Earlier this year, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta criticized the Justice Department in a rare rebuke after DOJ officials speculated in the media about possible sedition charges against members of the Oath Keepers.
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The Justice Department has told the courts that it is holding reams of evidence that defendants might deem exculpatory, but that at least some of the evidence has not been provided to defendants due to the massive number of Capitol riot cases. Roughly five dozen Capitol riot defendants are being held in pretrial detention.
Prominent Democrats, including President Joe Biden and those leading the congressional investigation into the riot, continue to suggest that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died as a result of the violence at the Capitol despite the medical examiner’s office in Washington concluding that his “cause of death” was from “acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis,” a stroke, and that the “manner of death” was “natural.”
Two protesters had fatal heart attacks during the riot, and another died of a suspected drug overdose. The only person determined to have been killed during the riot was Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran and Trump supporter who was shot by a Capitol Police officer as she attempted to climb through a broken window near the Speaker’s Lobby. The officer was not charged.
