Background: This image from police body-worn camera video, contained and annotated in the Justice Department’s government’s sentencing memorandum, supporting the sentencing of Brian Mock at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Mock was arrested for helping rioters remove police barricades and assaulting four police officers. (Department of Justice via AP). Inset: Former President Donald Trump attends a UFC 299 mixed martial arts bout. March 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Donald Trump, who faces multiple felony charges alleging that he conspired to obstruct the certification of the 2020 presidential election, has vowed to free all of those people who he claims have been “wrongfully imprisoned” on criminal charges tied to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol should return to the White House.
The former president referred to those individuals as “January 6 hostages” in a post on his floundering social media forum Truth Social on Monday, declaring it would be among his first acts as president, along with closing the border and to “drill, baby, drill.”
As of last week, according to analysis from the U.S. Justice Department, over 1,358 defendants from all 50 states and the District of Columbia have been charged, and of that group, nearly 500 have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees at the Capitol.
Arrests continue almost daily.
Donald Trump post on Truth Social March 11, 2024. Screengrab, Law&Crime.
Just three days before Trump’s post, authorities finally arrested John Banuelos, a man accused of rioting at the U.S. Capitol and allegedly firing a gun he brought with him — twice.
NBC News had identified Banuelos two years ago as someone who appeared to be flashing a gun contained in his waistband when he encountered police, but the footage of him firing it only emerged in February.
Federal prosecutors reported on March 7 that approximately 127 people have been charged with using a deadly weapon or causing seriously bodily injury to an officer.
At least 11 people have been arrested on charges connected to assault on the media and that would include defendants like Kayla Reifschneider, a California woman accused of storming the Capitol, smashing apart press cameras and spitting at reporters as she told them to “Get Covid!” She was arrested on March 7.
While the former president has altogether downplayed events at the Capitol and has historically shifted blame on violence to anti-Trump protesters or members of the leftist ideological movement “antifa,” it is notable that in court records defendants like Reifschneider were adamant it was his supporters who stormed the Capitol.
As Law&Crime previously reported, prosecutors say Reifschneider rebuffed a friend in a “Patriots45MAGA Gang” chat who asked if it was “antifa” who had stormed the Capitol.
“I can tell u [sic] that it isn’t antifa,” she allegedly wrote.
Trump’s post on Truth Social is not the first time he has labeled Jan. 6 defendants as “hostages.” He also did so in November during a rally in Texas — incidentally, the home state of Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the imprisoned leader of the far right Oath Keepers organization. Rhodes was tried and convicted on seditious conspiracy charges along with a handful of other members in the organization in November 2022. Rhodes was unrepentant at trial, and at his sentencing last May he deemed himself a “political prisoner” who “like Donald Trump only committed the crime of opposing those who are destroying our country.”
Rhodes is now serving a sentence of 18 years. The leader of the Proud Boys, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio was also convicted of seditious conspiracy and is serving a sentence of 22 years, the longest yet doled out to any Jan. 6 defendant.
Four people have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges while more than a dozen others, namely, members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, have been convicted on the sedition charge.
Arrests and sentencings for Jan. 6 defendants continue apace, too, as well as plea deals; in the three years since the attack at the Capitol, the Justice Department reports that approximately 769 people have struck deals on felony and misdemeanor charges. Many of them will still face incarceration at sentencing.
A complete breakdown of the criminal justice statistics behind Jan. 6 as of March 2024 is available here.
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