FBI Director Christopher Wray claimed the FBI is working just as hard to punish participants in the 2020 George Floyd riots as those involved in the Capitol riot, though neither the numbers nor his own boss’s words seem to back him up.
Wray made the improbable claim in response to questions during an appearance earlier this week at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
“I mean, absolutely,” Wray said. “We have one standard, which is, I don’t care whether you’re upset about an election, upset about our criminal justice system, whatever it is you’re upset about, there is a right way and a wrong way to express what you’re upset about in this country, and violence, violence against law enforcement, destruction of property, is not it.”
Republicans have raised concerns the Justice Department has not put the same effort into prosecutions tied to the violent, racially charged riots of 2020 as the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The GOP points to nationwide rioting and attacks on federal courthouses and police in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
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Wray said hundreds of arrests were made in both cases, using most of the FBI field offices, Joint Terrorism Task Forces, and “investigative publicity” such as Most Wanted posters.
But Wray also said that “there are some differences” between the summer 2020 riots and the Capitol riot.
“In the Jan. 6 instance, it happened in broad daylight and has been photographed extensively — people’s faces eminently visible — and involved the unmistakable breach and entry into the Congress when they were in the middle of conducting one of their most sacred responsibilities,” Wray said.
“Contrast that from a lot of what we saw over the summer was happening under cover of darkness, with people’s faces concealed, often attacking buildings that might not be federal property — in some cases the courthouse, but not while people were in operation. And so the federal hook, the federal jurisdiction, is sometimes a little different, and the ability to prove it is more challenging.”
He touted a case where a grand jury indicted Nautica Turner in October for trying to burn down a 7-Eleven in St. Louis in June 2020.
But in another case, a man who set a deadly fire in a Minneapolis pawnshop during the 2020 riots was spared a murder charge and sentenced to just 10 years for arson after federal prosecutors invoked Martin Luther King Jr. and asked the judge to show leniency. The judge sentenced Montez Terriel Lee to between six to ten years less than the sentencing guidelines.
Two months after the fire he had set, the charred remains of Oscar Lee Stewart were found in the rubble. Although Stewart’s death was attributed to the fire in the prosecutor’s sentencing memo, Lee was not charged with it.
Matthew Olsen, an assistant attorney general who heads the DOJ’s national security division, told the Senate in January that DOJ’s investigation into the Capitol riot is “unprecedented.” He also announced that his office had created a new “domestic terrorism unit” and said the Capitol riot is “being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism.”
The Justice Department said in January that at least 725 defendants have been arrested in connection with the Capitol riot and that more than 225 defendants had been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement officers. DOJ said in February that more than 165 defendants pleaded guilty to federal charges, including 22 felonies.
“The number of FBI [domestic terrorism] investigations over the past two years since March 2020 has more than doubled,” Olsen testified.
Jill Sanborn, the executive assistant director of the FBI’s national security branch, said the bureau had opened “slightly more than 800 cases” related to domestic terrorism tied to the 2020 riots, and she said that the arrests so far “are just a little bit north of 250.” She insisted the FBI is “still making progress on those cases.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in January that “there is no higher priority” at DOJ than prosecuting the Capitol riot cases and called the investigation “one of the largest, most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history.”
Even though some of the 2020 riots involved attacks on federal property and likely coordinated movements across state lines to commit crimes, Garland has demurred when asked why the feds aren’t more involved.
“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,” he told lawmakers last year.
Republican Sens. Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Rick Scott, Mike Lee, and Tommy Tuberville told Garland in June that DOJ’s “apparent unwillingness” to punish 2020 rioters “stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment” of the Capitol rioters.
Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, said that “the U.S. attorney’s office would have more credibility if it was even-handed in its concern about riots and mobs in the city” during one Capitol riot sentencing hearing in October.
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McFadden, in a December ruling, argued there was a “troubling theme” in how prosecutors handled Portland riot cases compared to Capitol riot ones.
“The Government dismissed 27 cases brought against Portland defendants, including five felony cases,” McFadden said. “Dismissal of one felony case is unusual. Dismissal of five is downright rare and potentially suspicious. Rarely has the Government shown so little interest in vigorously prosecuting those who attack federal officers.”
