The highest ranking law enforcement official in the United States promises to leave no stone unturned in the ongoing investigation into the Capitol riots a year ago.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose Justice Department has been criticized for its deliberate and slow work on the case, asks Americans for patience.
Garland says more than 725 people have been arrested and charged in connection with the January 6 attack, and those involved in assaulting police officers face the most serious charges.
He says the investigation issued more than 5,000 subpoenas and search warrants, seized 2,000 electronic devices, and examined 20,000 hours of video and 15 terabytes of data.
President Joe Biden will mark the first anniversary of the attack today with a speech that the White House says will distinguish between the truth of what happened on Capitol Hill and the lies perpetrated by former President Donald Trump.
Trump, for his part, canceled plans for a press conference in Florida, choosing instead to focus on a rally in Arizona next week.
Garland did not mention Trump by name Wednesday, but hinted that the investigation will continue to work behind the scenes to bring those responsible for the attack to justice regardless of their political prominence or partisan affiliation.
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“The Department of Justice remains committed to holding all the perpetrators of January 6 accountable to the law, at whatever level, whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the attack on our democracy,” he said.
“We will follow the facts wherever they take us.”
Investigating an event like January 6 is a complex and challenging task that does not instantly reveal all the necessary facts and evidence, he added.
US Attorney General on the January 6 Riots: “We will follow the facts, wherever they take us.” #USPoli
“We follow the physical evidence, we follow the digital evidence, we follow the money,” Garland said. “But most importantly, we follow the facts, not an agenda or an assumption. The facts tell us where to go next.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s speech will not avoid blaming Trump for what happened on January 6, criticizing the former president for spinning the ongoing fiction around the outcome of the 2020 election. and criticizing Republicans for their failure so far to confront reality.
“You don’t just love your country when you win; you love your country, you love democracy, in any setting, “said Psaki.
“The most disappointing thing for (Biden) is that there has been silence, and sometimes complacency, from too many Republicans who have sat down and defended the Big Lie, and perpetuated misinformation to the American public.”
Five people died in or as a direct result of last year’s hours riot on Capitol Hill, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who succumbed to his injuries the next day after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher and hit in the face with pepper spray.
Protester and Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by police as she and several others tried to force their way through the doors leading to the speaker’s lobby. Three other Trump supporters, Kevin Gleeson, Rosanne Boyland and Benjamin Philips, also lost their lives.
But many other Capitol Police officers remain scarred, physically and emotionally, not only by the events of that day but also by what they describe as the political efforts since then to ignore January 6 as a legitimate, non-violent public outcry. .
Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, a decorated U.S. Army veteran and Capitol Police officer, was one of several who testified before Congress last year about the experience. An opinion piece published Wednesday in the Washington Post made his lingering sense of betrayal understandable.
“We regret that the United States is somehow divided by what actually happened on January 6, and we are deeply concerned about the threat of future political violence that continues to loom over our democracy,” wrote Gonell and his colleague Harry Dunn.
“What we want, in fact, what we demand for ourselves and our fellow officers, is responsibility for January 6.”
Unlike the display of national unity that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the US body politic remains more fractured than ever, particularly in regards to the events of last January, suggests a new USA Today and Suffolk University survey.
While 83 percent of those surveyed said they were concerned about the future of democracy in the U.S., they differ on political lines as to why: 58 percent of Republicans who participated in the poll still say that Biden he is not the legitimate president, despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
Only a narrow majority of all respondents, 53 percent, said the select committee is doing important work, including 88 percent of Democrats, while 42 percent of the 1,000 people surveyed dismissed the committee as a wasted time, including 78 percent. Republicans
With Trump canceling his plans, two of the former president’s staunchest supporters in Congress, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, scheduled a counter-scheduling press conference Thursday in DC.
This Canadian Press report was first published on January 6, 2022.
Reference-www.nationalobserver.com