For some time now I’ve been commenting around here about my growing frustration and disillusionment with the Justice Department’s ongoing lenient treatment so far of people involved in the January 6 insurrection. So today I was pleased to see one of the key judges hearing Jan. 6 cases, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell, unleash a “blistering critique” of the Justice Department’s lenient prosecution of the insurrectionists.
Howell noted that the DOJ’s fiery rhetoric of the gravity of the 1/6 attack on the US Capitol is not being matching by the slap-on-the-wrist prosecution of those involved in the attack. Her critique came as she considered the sentencing of Tennessee video game developer Jack Jesse Griffith, whom the DOJ allowed to plead guilty to the misdemeanor of parading inside the Capitol. (Parading? Seriously?!? That's the best the DOJ can do?)
Why, she asked, when prosecutors called the riot an “attack on democracy . . . unparalleled in American history,” were Griffith and other participants facing the same charge as nonviolent protesters who routinely disrupt congressional hearings?
“It seems like a bit of a disconnect,” Howell said — “muddled” and “almost schizophrenic.”
Judge Howell also squarely blamed the DOJ for contributing to the deep divisive views among different segments of the American public about what happened on January 6.
“No wonder parts of the public in the U.S. are confused about whether what happened on January 6 at the Capitol was simply a petty offense of trespassing with some disorderliness, or shocking criminal conduct that represented a grave threat to our democratic norms,” Judge Beryl A. Howell said in court Thursday. “Let me make my view clear: The rioters were not mere protesters.”
The Washington Post notes that Howell and other judges have expressed similar concerns before, but this was Howell’s first time sentencing a “rioter” (as the Post calls the insurrectionists), and she spent over an hour interrogating prosecutors on the Griffith case.
Howell also questioned whether the DOJ’s light treatment of the insurrectionists will deter them from doing this again — something many of us here on dkos have also been questioning.
“Is it the government’s view that the members of the mob that engaged in the Capitol attack on January 6 were simply trespassers?” Howell asked incredulously. “Is general deterrence going to be served by letting rioters who broke into the Capitol, overran the police . . . broke into the building through windows and doors . . . resolve their criminal liability through petty offense pleas?”
Howell also expressed frustration that the DOJ asked for a three-month sentence for Griffith when they’ve sought probation for other insurrectionists whom the DOJ allowed to plead to similar misdemeanors. So she therefore put Griffith on probation for 36 months.
Howell criticized the prosecutors for seeming to treat the January 6 insurrectionists more leniently than defendants in other cases not connected to January 6. For example, the prosecutors only asked Griffith to pay $500 in restitution, which she noted “doesn’t even come close” to making the victims whole. She also blasted the prosecutors for not asking the Jan. 6 insurrections to be under court supervision until they paid their fines, which is a typical practice.
“This is the first time I’ve ever had the government ask for a restitution payment and not ask for a term of probation,” she said. “Is it because the government thinks these defendants are more trustworthy?”
That last comment hints at something that I’ve increasingly believed is true: the DOJ is treating the January 6 insurrectionists more leniently for two possible reasons: 1. Because the defendants are primarily white and on the right side of the political spectrum, which they either sympathize with or are afraid to stand up to; and/or 2. The DOJ doesn’t really believe that the attack on the US Capitol was the serious threat to our democracy that they say it is. Regardless, I am increasingly coming to believe that justice will not come for the January 6 assault on our Capitol and our democracy, which will help ensure that it will happen again — sooner than we think.