January Sixth: One Year and Two Investigations Later

On January 6, 2021, the United States House of Representatives and Senate met in a joint session to certify Joe Biden’s electoral college win. The joint session was disrupted soon after as supporters of then-US President Donald Trump began to storm the United States Capitol. With the US Capitol going into lockdown, supporters of the former president began a five-hour occupation before US Capitol police and US National Guardsmen could enter and clear the building. This series of events quickly came to be viewed as a devastating blow to American democracy. Following the events, two investigations were initiated to understand the circumstances that proceeded the attack. However, on the One-year anniversary of the attacks, what has been learned about the events leading up to and on the day of the US Capitol attack? A recent set of subpoenas and a criminal indictment have helped to shed light on these questions.

Before diving into the two investigations surrounding the events of January 6th, 2021, it is worth briefly reviewing the timeline of events. On that day, a joint session of Congress had been convened to certify the electoral vote win of Joe Biden. At the same time, former US President Donald Trump had also planned a rally for his supporters to decry the election results. Critically, during his rally, Donald Trump began to urge his supporters at the rally to march towards Congress. After entering the building, a mix of rally attendees and members of militias, assaulted members of the capitol police and threatened members of the House and Senate, along with vandalizing offices. After approximately five hours, the groups began to exit the building, and the joint session reconvened to certify the election results. Six months later, on June 30th, House Democrats passed a resolution to create the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, more commonly known as the “January 6 Committee.” This committee aims to investigate the events leading up to the attack, the attack itself, and ways to prevent a similar event from occurring in the future. The work of this committee, and its collaboration with federal authorities, produced a set of subpoenas and criminal indictments.

Following the investigations of the January 6 Committee, multiple subpoenas have been issued to different persons of interest related to the US Capitol Attack. Rudolph Giuliani, Eric Trump, and Kimberly Guilfoyle are the most prominent individuals subpoenaed. Interestingly, Guiliani’s subpoena focused on the role he played in pressuring allies to overturn the election results, contacting members of Congress, and arranging payments for attorney fees. Despite these accusations, and the Committee’s request for Guiliani to cooperate with an interview, it is unlikely that he will participate without taking legal action first. Trump and Guilfoyle’s subpoenas were for records of their calls and the logs of their text messages leading up to the Capitol Attack. Unlike Guiliani, the subpoenas for Eric Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle do not request that they cooperate with an interview.

Additionally, subpoenas have been issued to the parent companies of Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Reddit to explore how their platforms were used to spread disinformation and attempts to overturn the election results. However, there is an ongoing dispute between the parent companies and the Committee over whether the companies adequately cooperate in sharing their information on how disinformation was spread on their platforms. As a result, all subpoena cases will likely be delayed by legal battles moving forward.

The second track of the investigations focused on domestic groups involved in the planning and storming the US Capitol, along with plots to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The results of one of the investigations came to light on January 12, 2022, when federal authorities charged eleven members of the Oath Keepers with a range of charges, including seditious conspiracy. Among those charged was Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, who is both the founder and the leader of the group. The Oath Keepers are a loosely-organized right-wing militia movement that was active in the months leading up to the January 6 events by participating in anti-lockdown protests and providing vigilante-style security during the Black Lives Matter protests. Under Rhodes's leadership, the Oath Keepers coordinated ahead of the certification of the election results to travel to Washington D.C., with some bringing weapons according to the criminal indictment. The criminal indictment also outlines the alleged violent actions taken against officers once they entered the US Capitol building and a large number of firearms they had purchased before travelling to Washington D.C.

The most significant aspect of the criminal indictment against the Oath Keepers and Rhodes is the charge of Seditious Conspiracy. A seditious conspiracy is when two or more people collaborate to overthrow the government or prevent its laws from being executed. This charge could potentially influence the course of the federal authority’s investigations in two ways. First, the charge directly rebuffs the narrative that the events of January 6 were not an insurrection as seditious conspiracy precedes an insurrection, meaning that if the charge against Rhodes sticks, it would directly contradict those who denied that the event was an insurrection. This charge was written during the US Civil War and, since then, has been notoriously hard to prosecute successfully.

The last time the Justice Department decided to proceed with a prosecution on the charge was in 2010 against the Michigan militia Hutaree group, an anti-government Christian militia with apocalyptic beliefs who was later acquitted of the charge. However, in contrast to the charges facing the Oath Keepers, the Hutaree group’s plan for sedition were to wage a coordinated war on the government following a murder of a law enforcement agent. They were unable to put their plans into action before the FBI intervened unlike the Oath Keepers who were able to put several parts of their plan into action. Additionally, the Oath Keepers were not the only group that participated in the US Capitol attack. Other participating parties includes the Three Percenters (a freedom group based out of Texas), the Proud Boys (a white supremacist group), and prominent Qanon influences (an online conspiracy theory group). If Rhodes was convicted, it could set a precedent for individuals of these groups who may be charged later.

While none of the investigations stemming from January 6th have come to a close, the Justice Department has begun to take steps to prevent similar events from happening in the future. A large part of this will be to come to terms with the rapidly increasing presence of violent anti-government right-wing movements as a domestic terror threat. To do this, the Justice Department has created a new unit to focus on domestic terrorism within their National Security Division, focusing specifically on extremists who are violently racist or anti-government. The unit's focus will be to ensure that domestic terror cases are handled and coordinated effectively across the country. As a result of how the Justice Department set it up, the unit will not be affected by the country’s domestic politics, unlike the January 6 Committee that could be disbanded depending on the results of the 2022 Midterm election. This ensures that at least one of the investigations into the Capitol Attack will continue beyond 2022.

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Kelly Grounds is in her final year at Simon Fraser University, completing a Bachelors of Arts with Honours in Political Science and International Studies. Previously, she has completed courses with the NATO Defense College and Transparency International. Currently, Kelly is a research assistant on projects looking at state-sponsored disinformation and the role of international intuitions and will be joining the Canadian Federal Government as a Junior Policy Analysis once she completes her degree. In her spare time, she is working a project that analyses the state of Canada’s foreign and defense policy, with a focus on international interference, cyber policies, and Arctic security.