Outgoing US Attorney for DC reflects on prosecuting Jan. 6 cases

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the U.S. Attorney for D.C.’s office was confronted with a new set of circumstances.

Many of the crimes that occurred that day were unique, so there wasn’t a dedicated section of the office that would inherently be responsible for prosecuting those types of cases. That sent the office scrambling, according to Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for D.C. who was appointed by President Joe Biden and is planning to step down later this week.

As time passed, volunteers from other parts of the country offered to help with the prosecutions, “because they understood the significance of the crimes in terms of our democracy,” Graves said.

By the time Graves started in his role in the fall of 2021, those volunteers handled the Jan. 6 cases on nights and weekends, and were still trying to manage their caseloads related to crimes that happened before and after Jan. 6.

“The biggest thing that we did was to put a structure in place and to say, ‘We need the overwhelming majority of our people focused on crimes other than Jan. 6. We need those who are working on Jan. 6 to only be working on Jan. 6, and to be in a dedicated section for Jan. 6, and we need resources from outside of this office to deal with the Jan. 6-related crime,’” Graves said.

So, the office created a Capitol Siege section, which focused exclusively on Jan. 6 cases. Less than 5% of its staff was working on Jan. 6 cases full time, Graves said, “and the 95% of the rest of our staff were back to doing other crimes.”

In a December “Meet The Press” interview, President-elect Donald Trump said he planned to issue pardons to those convicted of Jan. 6 crimes when he takes office.

Last weekend, however, Vice President-elect JD Vance said those who protested peacefully should be pardoned, and those who committed violence shouldn’t. On “Fox News Sunday,” Vance said some of the cases have a “bit of a gray area.”

But Graves said there are about 400 cases connected to Jan. 6 where law enforcement said there was evidence someone committed a crime, but his office didn’t issue charges “because the crimes were generally just trespassing, illegally entering Capitol grounds but people not going into the Capitol themselves.”

“Everybody else, we believed that not only had they violated a federal law, but there was more than a sufficient reason to go forward with the prosecution,” Graves said.

Graves said 140 officers reported physical injuries from the Capitol riot, “So holding individuals accountable who assaulted law enforcement officers, that destroyed federal property, that’s something this office has always done and will always continue to do, regardless of political motivation.”

Even those who weren’t involved in assaults or destructive behavior, Graves said, were part of an effort to take over the Capitol with the intent of stopping Congress from certifying the election results.

“From my perspective, that’s a very serious crime, regardless of your political motivation, and not one that should be pardoned,” Graves said.

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Scott Gelman

Scott Gelman is a digital editor and writer for WTOP. A South Florida native, Scott graduated from the University of Maryland in 2019. During his time in College Park, he worked for The Diamondback, the school’s student newspaper.

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