Samuel Lazar (photo), 35, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, was arrested by the FBI on Monday, July 26, 2021. He’s accused of spraying police with chemical irritants during the Capitol riot. (Read story here, and more details here.)
So far, the FBI has arrested 535 Capitol rioters and is looking for 300 more. (The FBI’s official Capitol riot website page, which includes an alphabetical list of defendants and details of charges against them, is here.) The FBI says 165 of the suspects are charged with assaulting police.
That puts at 835 the number of people classified by the FBI as criminal participants in the Capitol attack after a review of evidence including videos, interviews, and online postings. Those still at large should be hunted to the ends of the earth, until they are caught, however long it takes and whatever resources of manpower and money are required.
More than 15,000 Trump supporters descended on the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, after Trump and other speakers incited them at a rally a few blocks away. Most just vented frustration over Biden’s election win at a raucous protest demonstration outside the Capitol, which they were entitled to do. The ~835 individuals the FBI has identified as rioters are people who actively sought to block the constitutional process of certifying electoral votes by entering and occupying the building, which interrupted (but did not stop) the process and forced the evacuation of Congress.
Many of these rioters have been charged with simple trespass, others with obstruction of official proceedings. That understates their crimes against our country, the police defending the Capitol, and public officials inside. Vice President Pence, Speaker Pelosi, and others were justified in believing their lives were in danger. The ultimate danger was to all of us: These people acted violently to overthrow our democracy and install a dictator.
In some countries, they might be tied to a stake and shot. This being America, they will get due process of law. That’s ironic, because it’s the very laws that protect them which they defied and attacked on January 6. Let the legal process run its course, and let them get what they deserve — under the law. We don’t shoot revolutionaries in this country. They should keep that in mind — and be grateful for it — when they’re trundled off to serve their prison sentences.
George Washington would pardon the majority of them and that is what Joe Biden should do. If you want healing. Now if all the defense attorneys were smart they would all demand jury trials, demand all the DC judges are biased and their clients cannot get a fair trial in the district and the trials be moved, insist on speedy trials. That would begin to gum things up.
Why stop at 835 go after anyone in the crowd as co conspirators. Heck go after anyone who voted for Trump, Especially go after the lawyers. Liberals used to have some issues with the FBI even called goose stepping NZIs but now they are the bastion to keep American democracy. The FBI should be shut down its useful parts like the crime lab, fibger print file turned over to the secret service. Its spy catching stuff to homeland. The Marshalls can handle the bank robberies. The DEA the drug and alcohol stuff. The FBI is an alphabet soup agency that should have been disbanded when the prohibition against alcohol ended. The aency is showing it still has the right stuff when it comes to a red scare though.
People who read that you want to defund the FBI for arresting the rioters, and jam up the court system so they can’t be prosecuted, might wonder if you were one of them.