WASHINGTON (AP) – These suspects were not exactly hidden.
“THIS IS ME”, posted a man on Instagram with a hand emoji pointing at himself in a photo of the violent crowd descending on the United States Capitol. “Soooo, we broke into Capitol Hill lol”, a woman texted someone while she was inside the building. “I just wanted to incriminate myself a little lol”, another wrote on Facebook about a selfie he took inside the house during the January 6 riot.
In dozens of cases, supporters of President Donald Trump openly flaunted their activities on social media on the day of the deadly uprising. Some, apparently realizing they were in trouble with the law, deleted their accounts only to find that their friends and family had already taken screenshots of their selfies, videos and comments and sent them to the FBI.
Their total lack of concern about being caught and their friends’ willingness to report them helped the authorities accuse about 150 people as of Monday by federal crimes. But even with the help of the hooligans themselves, investigators must still work rigorously to link the images to vandalism and the suspects to the January 6 acts to prove their case in court. And since few were arrested at the scene, the FBI and the US Marshals Service were forced to send agents to track suspects.
“Just because you left the DC area, you can still expect a knock on the door if we find out that you were part of a criminal activity within the Capitol,” Steven D’Antuono, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington office, said at earlier this month. “Conclusion – the FBI is sparing no resources in this investigation.”
In the past few weeks, the FBI has received more than 200,000 photos and video tips related to the riot. Investigators posted billboards in several states with photos of wanted protesters. Working with tips from coworkers, acquaintances and friends, the agents tracked the driver’s license photos to match their faces with those captured by the building’s camera. In some cases, authorities have obtained records from Facebook or Twitter to connect their social media accounts to their email addresses or phone numbers. In others, agents used plate reader records to confirm their travels.
More than 800 are believed to have entered the Capitol, although it is likely that not everyone will be tracked down and charged with a crime. Federal prosecutors are focusing on the most critical cases and the most blatant examples of irregularities. And they must weigh labor, cost and evidence when accusing the troublemakers.
A special group of prosecutors is examining the possibility of bringing charges of sedition against protesters, who face up to 20 years in prison. A trio was accused of conspiracy; most were accused of crimes such as illegal entry and disorderly conduct.
Many protesters posted selfies inside Capitol on their social media accounts, gave interviews to news outlets describing their experience and promptly admitted when asked by federal investigators that they were there. A man created an album on Facebook entitled “Who’s House? OUR HOUSE ”full of photos of him and others on the Capitol grounds, officials said.
“They may have thought, like so many people who work with Trump, that if the president tells me to do that, it is not breaking the law,” said Michael Gerhardt, an impeachment expert and professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law .
Others made serious mistakes, such as a Houston police officer, who denied entering the Capitol and agreed to allow agents to view the photos on his phone. Inside his folder of deleted photos were photos and videos, including selfies he took inside the building, officials said. Another man was using a court-ordered GPS monitor after a theft conviction that tracked all his movements inside the building.
A retired firefighter from Long Island, New York, sent a text message from himself at the Capitol roundabout to his girlfriend’s brother, saying he was “on the spear tip,” officials said. The brother was a federal agent for the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, who handed the video over to the FBI. The man’s lawyer, Thomas Fee, said he “was not part of any attempt to take over the United States Capitol” and that “the claim is that he simply entered the Capitol through an open door – nothing more.”
Another man who was inside the Capitol was willing to denounce another rowdy who stole the pulpit from Mayor Nancy Pelosi and sent the video by email to an FBI agent, even signing his own name on it. “Hi, nice FBI lady,” he wrote, “here are the links to the videos. It seems that Podium Guy is in one of them, minus the podium. Let me know if you need anything else. “
In another case, a man was on a flight out of DC two days after the uproar when he shouted “Trump 2020!” and it started. An airport policeman saw the man get off the plane and he was booked on another flight. Forty-five minutes later, the policeman was watching a video on Instagram and recognized the man in a group of protesters. The man, who wore the same shirt the day he broke into the Capitol, was arrested at the airport, officials said.
Even defense lawyers have acknowledged that the evidence poses a problem for them.
“I am not a magician,” said a lawyer for the man seen in a photo carrying Pelosi’s pulpit. “We have a picture of our client in what appears to be inside a federal building or inside the government-owned Capitol,” he told reporters.
Capitol police planned only a demonstration of freedom of expression and was overwhelmed by the crowd that invaded and wandered the Capitol corridors for hours while lawmakers were sent to hide. Five people died in the confusion, including a Capitol police officer who was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.
Trump was impeached after the riot on charges of “inciting violence against the United States government”. The opening arguments will begin in the week of February 8. He is the first president to face two impeachment cases and the first to face a trial after leaving office.
Unlike criminal cases, impeachment trials have no specific rules of evidence, so everything that was said and done that day can be used. And several of the accused said in interviews with reporters or federal agents who were simply listening to the president when they marched to the Capitol.
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Richer reported from Boston.