The Department of Justice wants to hire 131 additional lawyers to assist with the prosecution of cases stemming from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The $34.1 million request appears in the agency’s fiscal 2023 budget proposal released Monday, according to Insider. In total, the DOJ is asking Congress to approve a $37.7 billion budget, a $2.6 billion increase over the current fiscal year.
“The January 6 investigation is among the most wide-ranging and most complex that this department has ever undertaken,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement. “It reaches nearly every US attorney’s office, nearly every FBI field office.”
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“Regardless of whatever resources we seek or get, let’s be very, very clear: We are going to continue to do those cases,” Monaco said, adding that those accused of taking part in the Capitol riot would be held “accountable.”
More than 770 prosecutions related to Jan. 6 have been brought by the DOJ. Guy Wesley Reffitt of Texas, the first Capitol riot defendant to stand trial, was found guilty of all the charges he faced earlier this month. Reffitt has since submitted filings seeking a new trial.
These cases take up “resources that are needed to fight violent crime, those same resources that are needed to investigate corporate crime across the country. Those same resources that are going to help us enforce our civil rights laws,” Monaco said.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland described the Justice Department’s investigation surrounding the Capitol riot as being the “most urgent” in the department’s history.
“This is the most urgent investigation in the history of the Justice Department. It is the most resource intensive,” Garland said March 10 in an interview with NPR. “We have thrown 70 prosecutors from the District of Columbia and another 70 around the country. Every FBI office, almost every U.S. attorney’s office in the country is working on this matter. We’ve issued thousands of subpoenas, seized and examined thousands of electronic devices, examined terabytes of data, thousands of hours of videos. People are working every day, 24/7, and are fully aware of how important this is.”
