WASHINGTON — A year and a half after thousands of Donald Trump diehards overran the U.S. Capitol, prosecutors have scored relatively few felony convictions and face growing pressure to go after targets including the organizers 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 Jan. 6, at least 235 have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor offenses such as illegal parading. About 70 — still fewer than 10% of the total — have been sentenced to time behind bars for assaulting law enforcement officers and other crimes.
