Soon after the mob engulfed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a tipster pointed the FBI to TikTok video footage taken from scaffolding inside an off-limits area.
It wasn’t until July 2022 that agents traced the identity of the TikTok account holder to Peter Michael Krill Jr. They matched his wife’s phone number with cell site data to place the phone in the vicinity of the Capitol on Jan. 6, and they combined it with another tipster’s identification. They swooped in and made an arrest in New Jersey on Dec. 15.
A day later, agents were in Maryland arresting a man they identified as far back as Feb. 2, 2021, as “BOLO #132,” who they said was in the vanguard of the invaders. They used a photograph of a man wearing orange ski goggles and using a pole to try to slash his way through the line of officers barricading the western entrance to the Capitol.
Agents said they pegged the photo to Scott Miller, whom they labeled a leader of the Proud Boys organization, after talking with two of the officers in November. One identified Mr. Miller by the black gloves the perpetrator was wearing.
Mr. Miller and Mr. Krill are the latest among more than 950 people arrested so far in connection with the Jan. 6 riot. Both were arrested last month, nearly two years later.
Donald Trump has left office and the special congressional committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 has shut down, but the Justice Department says it is still pursuing leads it hopes will result in arrests and consequences for those who burst into the Capitol that fateful day.
“We remain committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for the Jan. 6 assault on our democracy. And we remain committed to doing everything in our power to prevent this from ever happening again,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said this week in a statement cheering on his investigators and prosecutors.
The FBI’s Washington field office said it plans to stay on the case “in the months and years to come.” Its “Capitol violence” webpage contains nearly 1,250 photos of still-unidentified participants.
The pace of work has raised questions about the Biden administration’s approach.
“Yes, there are some people that went to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and did some bad things. There’s no denying it. But that is not the majority,” said Cynthia Hughes, founder of the Patriot Freedom Project, which assists Jan. 6 defendants. “They’re lumping everybody into the same basket, and they want to create as much carnage as possible to send a message to Trump. … They’re using all these people to go after one person.”
The FBI has made more than 950 arrests, including nearly 200 on charges of assaulting police.
Agents amassed a digital library of images from the Capitol that day that spans nearly 4 million files. It includes more than 30,000 videos from police body cameras, surveillance cameras and footage gleaned from public sources.
The FBI said it would take nearly a year of continuous viewing for a single person to go through the videos.
Agents have also served search warrants to obtain phone location data of those in the vicinity of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
They have pleaded with the public to finger neighbors, co-workers or relatives who they believe were part of the mob.
The FBI said it has collected hundreds of thousands of tips, and court documents show they have been instrumental in building many of the Jan. 6 cases.
The FBI didn’t say how much manpower it has devoted to the effort, but some members of Congress worry it’s too much. The top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan of Ohio, last year released information from a bureau whistleblower who said agents were moved off child sexual abuse investigations to pursue domestic terrorism cases, citing the events of Jan. 6.
Mr. Jordan said the FBI was trying to make domestic terrorism cases seem like an epidemic by citing arrests of Jan. 6 defendants in states spanning the country.
Mr. Garland acknowledged the effort in his statement this week. He called it “one of the largest, most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history.”
“I am extremely grateful for the dedication, professionalism, and integrity with which they have done this work,” he said. “We have secured convictions for a wide range of criminal conduct on January 6 as well as in the days and weeks leading up to the attack. Our work is far from over.”
Among those convictions are significant wins, including a 10-year sentence against a former New York City police officer who slashed at a police officer with a flagpole and then tried to yank off the officer’s helmet and gas mask.
Two leaders of the Oath Keepers organization have been convicted of seditious conspiracy for their effort to stockpile guns, ammunition and other supplies and to form “quick reaction force teams” to be ready for an assault on the Capitol.
More common, though, are cases like Jenny Cudd’s. She was charged with entering a restricted building, obstructing an official proceeding, disorderly conduct, parading or demonstrating at the Capitol, and aiding and abetting.
She pleaded guilty to entering and remaining in a restricted building. Prosecutors demanded a 75-day jail sentence, but the judge gave her two months of probation and a $5,000 fine.
Her attorney, Marina Medvin, argued that the Justice Department was far harsher in the Jan. 6 cases than in similar incidents.
She pointed to protests surrounding the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh in 2018, when demonstrators flooded one of the Senate office buildings and disrupted the hearing.
Just one protester was charged federally, and that was with a minor misdemeanor, despite pushing a chair into another attendee and resisting his ouster, forcing officers to carry him out by arms and legs.
Ms. Medvin said more than 1,000 other Kavanaugh protesters were charged with local District of Columbia violations that more closely matched the behavior of rank-and-file Jan. 6 attendees — yet the Jan. 6 cases were slapped with federal felony charges.
“The only difference between the nonviolent January 6 protesters and the nonviolent Kavanaugh protestors is politics. Ms. Cudd entered amid a crowd of Trump supporters,” Ms. Medvin argued in a sentencing memorandum for Ms. Cudd.
Another comparison is the weekslong attack on police and the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, in the summer of 2020. Protesters blinded officers with lasers, battered police with hammers, bats and bottles, and tried to ignite fires using Molotov cocktails.
Defendants in the Portland cases received more leniency. Federal officials regularly accepted deals that dropped charges as long as someone completed community service.
One man who fired a gun at the courthouse on the evening of Jan. 8, 2021 — two days after the Capitol riots in Washington — escaped without a prison sentence and got five years’ probation.
Federal agents don’t appear to be spending much time trying to track down more perpetrators. The last charges stemming from Oregon’s riots were announced in early June 2021 — more than 18 months ago.
One federal judge called the disparity between Portland and Jan. 6 “troubling.” He said that “rarely has the Government shown so little interest in vigorously prosecuting those who attack federal officers.”
Judge Trevor McFadden also said there were important differences: The Portland protesters attacked an empty building at night, while the Jan. 6 mob assaulted a building in the middle of counting Electoral College votes. The Portland rioters were largely unsuccessful in breaching the courthouse, but the Jan. 6 rioters forced the vice president to flee for his life through the halls of the Senate.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.