Nearly 1,425 people have been arrested on Jan. 6 charges, with 2024 arrests running at almost double the rate from 2023 and 2022, a U.S. Department of Justice report shows.
Through close of business on May 3, the FBI has arrested 1,424 suspects in the 40 months since the breach and violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the DOJ reported in its monthly update.
That includes 159 people who were arrested during the first four months of 2024, nearly double the 83 arrested during the same period in 2023 and the 85 arrested in the same period in 2022, DOJ records show.
The FBI has made 391 Jan. 6 arrests since May 2023 and 614 arrests since May 2022, according to DOJ data.
Jan. 6 is the largest, most sweeping investigation in FBI history—one that DOJ leaders have pledged will continue unabated. The DOJ has until Jan. 6, 2026, to charge individuals before the statute of limitations expires.
Some 1,334 people have been charged with entering and remaining in a restricted federal building or grounds, the most common Jan. 6 misdemeanor. Of those, 127 people were charged with entering and remaining while armed with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
Only two defendants were arrested over the past month for corruptly obstructing an official proceeding—the most commonly charged Jan. 6 felony that now affects 355 people—a controversial charge currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Thirty-six percent of defendants—510—have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees. More than a quarter of those involved use of a deadly or dangerous weapon, the report said.
About 820 defendants have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal crimes. Sixty-nine percent were misdemeanor charges, and 31 percent were felonies.
Nearly 885 defendants have had their cases adjudicated, with 61 percent sentenced to prison time, 19 percent given home detention, and 3.5 percent given some combination of the two, the report said.
About 160 defendants have been found guilty at contested trials, the report said, including three tried in the District of Columbia Superior Court. Another three dozen defendants were found guilty based on an agreed-upon set of facts.
Of the 199 defendants who have gone to trial, 82 were found guilty of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers and/or obstructing officers during civil disorder—both felony charges.
Every defendant who opted for a jury trial has been found guilty of at least some of the charges lodged against them. Only three defendants have been acquitted of all charges. Those cases involved bench trials.
The rate of arrests picked up during the last quarter of 2023 and has continued through four months of 2024.
On April 16, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on a challenge to the DOJ’s novel use of a corporate fraud statute to prosecute Jan. 6 protesters with a 20-year felony.
The Supreme Court said on Dec. 13, 2023, that it would take up Jan. 6 defendant Joseph W. Fischer’s challenge to the use of 18 U.S. Code Section 1512(c)(2) to prosecute Jan. 6 defendants for obstructing Congress’s tallying of Electoral College votes.
If the High Court strikes down the use of the law for Jan. 6 applications, it could upend the aforementioned 355 cases and land a blow to the DOJ’s prosecution effort.
However, prosecutors have indicated they could seek sentencing enhancements on other charges or request that prison sentences be served consecutively as ways to ensure that defendants still serve the same time behind bars.
A small number of defendants have been released from prison pending the Supreme Court decision. Others have had sentencing hearings postponed in anticipation of High Court action in the case by June 30.
