Approximately 300 people participated in the Capitol riots on January 6, but the authorities have not yet determined their identity. FBI, According to the bureau’s website, is seeking information about the personnel.
The website displays more than 900 photos of unidentified people who participated in the attack on the Federal Building. For information on the suspect who planted a tube bomb outside the offices of the Republican and Democratic National Committees on January 5, the FBI also offered a reward of up to $100,000.
“They will find them,” Robert Anderson Jr., the former executive assistant director of the Criminal, Network, Response and Services Division of the FBI, told The Associated Press. “I don’t care how long it takes. If they are looking for them, they will find them.”
According to the Associated Press, more than 500 thugs have been arrested so far, and more than a dozen people have pleaded guilty to the charges.
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For more reports from the Associated Press, please see below:
The first wave of arrests in the deadly siege of the Capitol focused on easy targets. On January 6, dozens of people who supported Trump publicly brag about their actions on social media and were captured by shocking footage broadcast live by the national news media.
Efforts to find the thugs reflect the large-scale investigation and the arduous work still facing the authorities, as some Republican lawmakers are increasingly working hard to rewrite what happened that day.
Among those who have not yet been captured, many have been accused of assaulting law enforcement officials or violent and threatening reporters.
Part of the problem is that the authorities arrested very few people on January 6. Instead, they focused on cleaning up the buildings of members of the mass rioters who attacked the police, destroyed historical property, and combed the halls for the legislators they threatened to kill. Federal investigators were forced to go back to hunt down the participants.
Since then, the FBI has received numerous tips and digital media from the public. But tipping is only the first step in an arduous process—including search warrants and interviews—to confirm people’s identities and their presence in the rebellion in order to bring the case to court. The authorities have no record of many assailants because this is the first time they have broken the law.
“Most of these people have never appeared on radar screens before,” said Frank Montoya, a retired FBI agent who leads the bureau’s field offices in Seattle and Honolulu. “When you watch a movie, a name will appear on the radar screen. They know all the aliases and the place where he last had dinner. Just press a button. Unfortunately, this is not the case.”
The FBI was helped by “sedition hunters” or armchair detectives, who joined forces to identify some of the most elusive suspects and used crowdsourcing to study a large number of videos and photos from the attack.
Forrest Rogers is a business consultant who helped form a sedition hunter organization called “Deep State Dogs.” He said that the organization had reported to the FBI the possible identities of about 100 suspects based on collected evidence.
Sometimes, a distinctive outfit can help the team to match. Rogers said that in one case, a woman carrying a unique iPhone case was photographed using the same case during an earlier protest on January 6.
“This is seeking justice,” he said. “This is unprecedented in the history of our country.” Rogers asked: “Where else are there thousands of people who commit crimes and then immediately spread across the United States?”
John Scott-Railton is a senior researcher at the Citizens Laboratory at the University of Toronto. He has been working with reporters and others to use digital clues to identify suspects. He said that although he knows a lot about the “little fish” who committed the crime that day, he needs a deeper understanding of the behavior of organized group leaders.
He said: “We all need to be in one place where we can have a conversation about what January 6th is, not just a group of people driven by a series of ideologies appearing in the Capitol.”
The wanted people include many people accused of violently assaulting police officers. A video released by the FBI shows an unidentified man attacking a police officer with a truncheon. In another photo, a man tore off the gas mask of a police officer who screamed in pain when he was pressed by an angry mob at the door.
The FBI released a new video of 11 thugs attacking law enforcement officers on Tuesday and called on the public to help identify the suspect. More than 100 people have been arrested on suspicion of assaulting law enforcement officials in the Capitol.
In some cases, social media platforms have handed over guilty posts that the defendants tried to delete because their celebration of the siege gave way to fear of arrest. Usually, the attacker’s own family, friends or acquaintances will report to the authorities.
In one case, the FBI used facial matching software on his girlfriend’s Instagram account. The agent then went undercover, secretly recorded the man’s work situation, and asked him to admit that he was in the crowd, which he called “interesting”.
“The more of these people you identify — perhaps through search warrants and social media communications — you will be able to identify other people,” said Tom O’Connor, who focused on counter-terrorism work as an agent before leaving the bureau in 2019. “Those Those arrested will have the opportunity to cooperate and identify other persons involved in the case.”
Regarding the person responsible for planting the tube bomb in Washington on January 5, the video shows a person wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, mask and gloves, and appears to have placed one of the explosives under the bench outside the Democratic National Committee. Was walking in an alley near the Republican National Committee, where the bomb was planted. It is not clear whether these bombs are related to the planned rebellion.
Ministry of Justice officials stated that arresting all those involved in the rebellion remains a top priority. Authorities recently arrested the 100th person accused of assaulting law enforcement and the first person accused of assaulting a press person. The prosecutor said a man assaulted a photographer.
On January 6, more than a dozen defendants have pleaded guilty, including two members of the Oath Guardian Militia, who admitted to colluding with other extremists to prevent the president’s certification Joe BidenVictory.
Most of the other plea agreements reached so far are for cases where the defendant has been charged with a misdemeanor only for entering the Capitol illegally. The only defendant sentenced was an Indiana woman who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was not in jail.
Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press Photo
