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DEVELOPING SOME PERSPECTIVE ON THE CAPITOL RIOT. In the last few days we've seen a series of hearings in the House and Senate on the January 6 riot at the Capitol. After all the talk, we still don't know some of the basic facts of the riot, especially the circumstances surrounding the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, the only law enforcement officer and only non-rioter to die in the violence. But in spite of the gaps in our knowledge, a sense of perspective on the riot — Who was involved? What did they think they were doing? — has begun to emerge.
First, the riot is often referred to as an "armed insurrection." A search of the Nexis database of newspapers, websites, and cable news transcripts finds 2,339 times since January 6 in which the riot was described as an "armed insurrection." On many other occasions, the rioters were described simply as "armed." But the description requires an asterisk that is rarely, if ever, applied. A small number of the rioters did indeed have baseball bats or bear spray, and a few used flagsticks or even, in one case, a crutch as weapons to assault Capitol police. But the armed insurrectionists did not use any firearms. Before January 6, if anyone heard the phrase "armed insurrection," he or she might have assumed guns were involved. At the Capitol riot, they weren't.
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One of the witnesses at the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing on Wednesday was Jill Sanborn, who is an FBI assistant director for the Counterterrorism Division. In the course of the questioning, Republican Senator Ron Johnson asked Sanborn about the rioters and guns. Here is their exchange:
JOHNSON: How many firearms were confiscated in the Capitol or on Capitol grounds during that day?
SANBORN: To my knowledge, we have not recovered any on that day from any other arrests at the scene at this point. But I don't want to speak on behalf of Metro and Capitol Police. But to my knowledge, none.
JOHNSON: So nobody has been charged with an actual firearm weapon in the Capitol or on Capitol grounds?
SANBORN: Correct. The closest we came was the vehicle that had the Molotov cocktails in it. And when we did a search of that vehicle later on, there was a weapon.
JOHNSON: How many shots were fired that we know of?
SANBORN: I believe the only shots that were fired were the ones that results in the death of the one lady.
The "one lady" referred to rioter Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by a single bullet fired by a Capitol Police officer. As it turned out, there was one firearms case that Sanborn did not mention, an accused rioter named Christopher Alberts, who was seen on the Capitol grounds at 7:25pm the night of the riot. Police noticed a bulge in his jacket which they thought was a gun. They approached Albert, who ran away. When police caught him, he did indeed have a 9 millimeter handgun and an extra magazine. He was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm on Capitol grounds or buildings, plus a few other weapons offenses. But so far, Alberts appears to be the only person charged with having a gun on Capitol grounds. And we know for a fact that no one, other than the officer who shot Ashli Babbitt, fired a weapon that day.
So the hearings have given us some perspective on the "armed" part of the "armed insurrectionist" label. The other thing that the hearings have given us is an idea of who was at the Capitol that day. Senator Johnson is exploring the idea that a core group of rioters essentially incited a much larger crowd into rioting that day. He asked Sanborn if "you had these army militia groups that had conspired and organized to be there, maybe dozens, we don't know how many, but that — they were organized and knew how to use the mob, to storm the Capitol? Is that kind of what you're seeing?"
Sanborn agreed, at least in part, with Johnson's characterization. "We definitely so far are seeing a mixture of that, absolutely," she answered. "We're seeing people that got caught up in the moment, got caught up in the sort of energy, et cetera, and made their way into the Capitol. And those are probably the ones that you're seeing the charges simply of trespassing. And then, we're definitely seeing that portion that you're pointing out, which is small groups and cells now being charged with conspiracy, that coalesced either on site or even days or weeks prior and had sort of an intent that day. And they, too, probably caught people up in the energy."
Earlier this week, FBI Director Christopher Wray, who frustrated the Senate with his refusal to answer some key questions about the riot, nevertheless helped senators with a broad taxonomy of the rioters. Appearing before the Judiciary Committee, Wray was asked by Republican Senator Ted Cruz, "What do we know about the planning and coordination that occurred surrounding the January 6 attack?”
Wray said it was useful to "step back" and take a wider look at the people involved on January 6. He divided them into three categories. "The first group — the largest group, the group that we need to spend the least time talking about — is peaceful, maybe rowdy, protesters, but who weren't violating the law," Wray said. And then:
Then there's the second group — think of a reverse pyramid — a second group that is people who may have come intending to just be part of a peaceful protest, but either got swept up in — in the motive, or emotion, or whatever, engaged in kind of low-level criminal behavior. Trespass, say, on the Capitol grounds, but not breaching the building. [It's] still criminal conduct, still needs to be addressed, but more on the fly, in the moment, opportunistic.
The third group — the smallest group numerically, but by far and away the most serious group — are those who breached the Capitol grounds and engaged in violence against law enforcement, who attempted to disrupt the members of Congress and the conduct of their constitutional responsibilities. And of those, some of those people clearly came to Washington, we now know, with plans and intentions to engage in the worst kind of violence we would consider domestic terrorism. And so, some of that coordination appears to have been coordinated travel, coordinated meeting up, coordinated in terms of what kind of gear they might be wearing or bringing with them, that kind of thing.
Wray did not attach any numbers to the groups, except to say that the most criminally culpable group was also the smallest. But taken together, Wray's and Sanborn's testimony provided some needed perspective as officials, and all Americans, try to understand the Capitol riot.
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