Here’s How the Capitol Mob Violated Federal Criminal Law - Lawfare

The Department of Justice has already arrested and charged thirteen rioters for a variety of federal offenses.  Many more will soon follow.  There will be charges for weapons, assault and disrupting government operations.  Let's remember the basic facts: at the moment of the verification of the results of the national election armed men drove the entire membership of the United States Congress from their chambers and into hiding under the guard of Capitol police.  - GWC

Here’s How the Capitol Mob Violated Federal Criminal Law - Lawfare

By Bryce Klehm, Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Jacob Schulz

 Thursday, January 7, 2021, 11:28 AM

Yesterday’s violent storming of the Capitol building raises questions about President Trump’s fitness to see out the remaining two weeks of his term; about whether large parts of the Republican Party remain committed to even basic norms of democratic government; and about how the country should move on from this brazen attack on the peaceful transition of power.

But it also raises a host of criminal law enforcement issues. Hundreds of people participated in what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell condemned as a “failed insurrection[.]” And, as Bobby Chesney described on the National Security Law Podcast, the events included a “cartoonish avalanche of crimes.” For reasons that remain unclear, relatively few people were actually arrested yesterday, but the FBI has begun trying to figure out the identities of those who stormed the Capitol. And a growing number of U.S. attorneys have written on Twitter that “Federal crimes were violated today at our Nation’s Capitol building,” and that rioters who traveled to D.C. would be prosecuted by U.S. attorneys in their home districts.

The extensive video evidence and crowds of people involved in yesterday’s mayhem give rise to a plethora of potential criminal charges against a large number of criminal suspects. Here, we spell out some of the potential federal criminal statutes that could apply to yesterday’s conduct. It's not intended to be an all-encompassing list and will likely grow as more reporting emerges about what exactly happened on Capitol Hill. Nor do we directly address President Trump’s potential legal exposure, a subject that raises complicated questions of presidential liability to criminal prosecution.

Criminal law is highly fact-specific, and there are still many unanswered questions about what precisely occurred yesterday in any given incident and who had what level of involvement in planning or executing the acts that made up the mob violence. But here is a rough list of plausible factual predicates for any follow-on prosecution under federal law:

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