As US Capitol riot public hearings begin, who will be held accountable?
- Two weeks of blockbuster televised hearings into the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol to start Thursday
- Some US lawmakers hope to show the American public how democracy came to the brink of disaster
A year and a half after thousands of Donald Trump diehards overran the US Capitol, prosecutors have scored relatively few felony convictions and face growing pressure to go after targets including the organisers and the former president himself.
The Justice Department’s massive investigation – into the riot and deeper efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s election – has scored about 50 felony guilty pleas out of more than 800 defendants charged since the mob breached the neoclassical building in January 2021, in the most serious attack on American democracy in the modern era.
As the congressional committee looking into the insurrection prepares to hold its first public hearings this week, the only charges brought against Trump aides have been for failing to respond to the panel’s demands for information.
Of those charged for the events of January 6, at least 235 have pleaded guilty to misdemeanour offences such as illegal parading. About 70 – still fewer than 10 per cent of the total – have been sentenced to time behind bars for assaulting law enforcement officers and other crimes.
Even at that, the Justice Department has had to bring in reinforcements from all over the country to help handle the caseload. It has detailed assistant US attorneys nationwide and sought support from all 56 field offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as it sifts through reams of surveillance footage, social media posts and testimony.
In its budget request for 2023, the department is seeking US$34 million to hire 131 more lawyers to work on the case.
