Three years on, more than 80 people are still wanted for acts of violence on January 6
Dan Rivers reports from Pennsylvania, where US president Joe Biden gave his first big speech of the election year.
On the eve of the three year anniversary of the January 6th storming of the Capitol, Mr Biden warned that Donald Trump presents a threat to American democracy.
More than 80 people are still wanted in connection to the violence at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Saturday will mark the third anniversary of the riot, in which hundreds of police officers were bloodied, beaten, and attacked by Trump supporters as they broke into the building.
The mob attempted to stop the certification of votes for President Joe Biden, who had won the 2020 election.
Today, authorities continue to make new arrests, even as some defendants are being released from prison after completing their sentences.
Authorities are also still working to find out who placed pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic national committees’ offices the day before the attack.
“The Justice Department will hold all January 6 perpetrators at any level accountable under the law, whether they were present that day or otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday.
At the time of writing, more than 1,230 people have been charged with federal crimes in the riot, ranging from misdemeanor offenses like trespassing to felonies like assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy.
About 750 people have been sentenced, with almost two-thirds receiving some time behind bars. Prison sentences have ranged from a few days of intermittent confinement to 22 years in prison.
The longest sentence was handed down to Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys national chairman who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors described as a plot to stop the transfer of power from Trump to Biden.
At least nine people who were at the Capitol that day died during or after the rioting, including several officers who died of suicide, a woman who was shot and killed by police as she tried to break into the House chamber, and three other Trump supporters whom authorities said suffered medical emergencies.
In a speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where George Washington and the Continental Army spent a bleak winter nearly 250 years ago, Biden said that the Capitol attack marked a moment where “we nearly lost America — lost it all.”
He said the presidential race — a likely rematch with Trump, who is the far and away GOP frontrunner — is “all about” whether American democracy will survive.
“We all know who Donald Trump is,” Biden said. “The question we have to answer is who are we?”
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