Surprise! The justice system keeps moving even if you’re a Trump-supporting Republican in Congress mad about the criminal charges and convictions that have implicated well over 1,000 people after the violent, deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol in early 2021.
A recent report from NBC News shared comments from U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves, the top prosecutor for the federal government in Washington, D.C., who said that a significant number of new criminal cases over alleged actions at the Capitol on that fateful day would be coming soon. He cited tips from everyday Americans, which have figured already into a significant portion of proceedings.
“Many citizens from around the country have already come forward to identify individuals connected with the Jan. 6 attacks. As a result of these tips, scores of individuals have been identified and will soon be prosecuted for violent acts at the Capitol and other violations of federal law,” Graves said at a press conference, as shared by NBC.
Donald Trump, who remains generally on track for Republicans’ presidential nomination for 2024, and others in his political corner continue to complain about the treatment of criminal defendants with cases arising from the January 6 violence.
In a new campaign speech in Iowa, Trump referred to detainees facing such charges as “hostages,” which while extreme, mirrors other language that far-right figures have used basically for years at this point. “You have the hostages, the J6 hostages I call them. Nobody’s been treated ever in history so badly as those people,” Trump told an Iowa crowd, specifying his outrageous claims that January 6 defendants have received the worst treatment in history applied just to the U.S. — which doesn’t lessen the ridiculousness.
The basic fact is that individuals criminally charged for alleged participation in January 6 have had available established, procedural safeguards as they’ve moved through the justice system. At a foundational level, their treatment has been subject to input by a frankly large, wide-ranging number of individuals, from prosecutorial staff to jurors to judges. They’re not “hostages” per reasonable understandings of that.
