The invasion of the US Congress on January 6, 2021, in which supporters of Donald Trump tried to prevent the confirmation of Joe Biden’s victory in the previous year’s presidential election, was the greatest attack on American democracy in recent history. And the remedy has not been less.
Two years after the episode that continues to haunt the corridors of power in the capital of the United States, the FBI arrested more than 950 people – the investigation is considered the largest in the history of the agency. In videos alone, the American federal police says they analyzed nine terabytes of information, something that, if placed on a single track, would add up to 361 uninterrupted days of recordings.
In all, cases were opened against 940 people, according to the Program on Extremism, a group at George Washington University, in the US capital, which monitors the cases of January 6th. More than half of the defendants, 482, confessed their guilt and another 44 were so considered by the Justice.
The longest sentence so far was handed down to a retired New York ex-military and police officer, Thomas Webster, 56, who was sentenced in early September to just over 10 years in prison — for, among other things, assaulting a police officer with a flagpole and hanged him trying to remove his helmet and gas mask. The aggression was recorded by the agent’s body camera and by other protesters.
“As a former US law enforcement officer and Marine who was sworn to uphold the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, Webster knew the gravity of his actions,” FBI Assistant Director Steven D’Antuono said at the time of the conviction. “When he assaulted an official on the U.S. Capitol that day, he betrayed not only his oath but also his fellow law enforcement officers, who risk their lives every day to protect the American people.”
Webster’s sentence, however, is an exception. Of the 353 defendants who have already had their sentence decided —in the US, the conviction and the announcement of the sentence are made at different times—, only 47 were sentenced to more than one year in prison; most received only a few weeks of sentencing.
This is the case of the two Brazilian defendants for the episode. Letícia Ferreira Vilhena, an engineer who lives in the Chicago area, was sentenced in October to two weeks in jail, 60 hours of community service and US$ 500 (R$ 2,701) in fine after signing an agreement with the Justice, by which declared guilty.
THE Sheet was unable to contact Vilhena. In the lawsuit, the lawyers stated that she does not have the right to vote in the US, she just wanted to see the demonstration and does not endorse the violence of that day. Vilhena stated that she followed the crowd and spent 20 minutes in the Capitol.
The other Brazilian is Eliel Rosa, a Texas resident, who was sentenced to 12 months of probation, in addition to a $500 fine and 100 hours of community service. At trial, he expressed regret and called the act stupid — he did not respond to the reporter’s messages.
Jonathan Lewis, a researcher at George Washington University, says that the lower sentences so far are the result of a Justice Department strategy to deal with the huge number of cases and that, from now on, sentences should be higher.
The court decided to divide the defendants into three groups. The first, with people who were physically inside the Capitol but did not commit violence, like the two Brazilians. “People joke that it’s ‘the regulars’, who came in with a ‘make America great again’ cap [lema de Trump]spent some time and left,” explains Lewis.
The second brings together those who have proven to have committed violent acts, most of them against police officers — Webster’s case. According to the FBI, of the nearly 1,000 arrests made, about 200 involved assaults on security agents. One of them died the next day after having a heart attack, and four others committed suicide after the invasion.
With the progress of the processes of these two groups, taking of testimonies and access to publications on social networks, exchange of messages and photos and videos taken in the days of the invasion, the investigation now advances on the third group, that of radicals linked to extremist groups, like Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. “People who were not only at the Capitol, but who had been conspiring for a long time before the attack and who went there with the specific intent of obstructing the process and preventing the peaceful transfer of power,” says Lewis.
At the end of November, the US court convicted five members of the Oath Keepers, an armed group considered domestic terrorists by experts on the subject. Co-founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes 3rd, 57, and others were convicted of crimes including seditious conspiracy (against a state official), obstruction of official procedure and tampering with proceedings. The maximum penalty for each of these cases is 20 years in prison, but the sentence has not yet been released.
The breadth of the investigation indicates that the US government, via Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, does not intend to let the attack on the Capitol, described as an attempted coup d’état, go unnoticed. So far, only one person has been cleared, according to George Washington data — Matthew Martin of New Mexico, who said he went to Congress thinking it was just another Trump demonstration and that the police let him in because there were no barriers. of security.
The actions against the invaders are not the only ones, and the former president himself is the subject of an investigation by the Department of Justice. The Republican has also just been accused by the House of Representatives committee investigating the attack, which called for his indictment for crimes such as conspiracy and incitement to insurrection, in another historic investigation, which generated a report of more than 800 pages.
Two years after the attack, the most concrete threat in the US today no longer comes from extremist organizations, but from individuals radicalized by these discourses, according to Lewis —who cites as an example the attack on the FBI office in Ohio in August, after the operation against Trump’s Florida residence. On that occasion, a supporter of the former president tried to invade a federal police building with an AR-15 rifle, exchanged fire with agents and was chased until he was killed.
“They are not actors formally associated with violent domestic extremist groups. However, they are willing to mobilize to commit acts of violence, echoing the same conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric of the mob that invaded the Capitol on January 6th. America’s main danger today.”
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
