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In the thread below about the WNBA player who was sentenced for weed possession in Russia, the discussion dovetailed into how January 6th defendants are treated and a couple of people made what to me were eyebrow-raising claims. @anti_dan worried about the fact that J6 defendants could "be held without bail for wandering in", and @The_Nybbler was concerned about how "many of the "rioters" who committed no crime worse than trespassing (in some cases not even entering the building, just supposedly-forbidden parts of the grounds) are getting harsh punishments for political reasons".
As the token defense attorney who cares about criminal justice reform, both concerns piqued my attention. But as far as I can tell, the concerns are fictitious [EDIT: see notes below]. I've previously written about the difficulties inherent with collecting representative data about state crime statistics (tldr: lots of scattered jurisdictions + lack of court record transparencies), and while I've previously whinged about people here being sloppy with their claims about state crime trends, I fully appreciate the reluctance in committing to what can amount to a thesis-level research endeavor.
But it's different with the J6 prosecutions because they're all happening in a single jurisdiction with a lot of people paying attention. Information is surprisingly easy to find. Just googling "january 6th defendants database" will lead to dozens of hits.
Regarding the people held without bail just for wandering in, I did a quick google search but couldn't come up with an updated number of how many defendants are still held in jail (either with no bail or with unrealistic bail). There was a DC Appeals Court decision a while back that instructed magistrates to release people unless the government can demonstrate a specific threat. This means that anyone who is "held without bail for wandering in" would be contrary to that court's order. It's possible I missed something, but I couldn't find any evidence of this happening [EDIT: see notes below].
For the claim that "many" of the J6 defendants were facing "harsh punishments" (in fairness, this is ambiguous) for doing no worse than just trespassing, this too was easy to quickly google. This database from Politico is out of date but was at least searchable. Most of what I was familiar with for misdemeanor J6 pleas was just probation with no jail time. I plugged in "entering a restricted building" in the full table and sorted by incarceration and saw only three people got jail time (reminder that the database is incomplete) with the highest being 50 days for William Tryon. I quickly googled and easily found the guilty statement that was filed in his case. I would guess that the aggravating factors that made his case stand out was that he asked police to enter the building, was denied, tried to enter anyway, was pepper-sprayed, created an opening at another location by removing broken glass, encouraged other people to enter the building, and then confronted another line of police. He couldn't have claimed a plausible defense of "I didn't know I couldn't enter" based on those facts. Given what I know about misdemeanor sentencing, 50 days of jail for this fact pattern did not strike me as out of the norm. Maybe The_Nybbler knows about "many" other cases that I somehow missed, or perhaps they have a specific definition of "harsh punishments" which would encompass probation.
I responded to both with my concerns but neither replied. Maybe either/both have some evidence to showcase, in which case they now have another opportunity to do so (yay!). I think this is an illuminating exercise because it can shed light on our biases and how we can process information. In my last whinge on this topic, I had an enlightening exchange with adamsb6, where they initially suspected that J6 defendants were treated especially harshly. I asked some basic Bayesian questions (how many J6 defendants? what % of those were released? what % of all federal defendants are released?) and they were surprised at how off-base some of their assumptions were. This does not mean that J6 defendants are not treated especially harshly, but the exchange was instructive because it plainly demonstrated how even a conclusion arrived at in earnest can be muddied up if you are led by inaccurate premises.
I hope we can have a similarly enlightening exchange with the above examples. It's possible that both @anti_dan and @The_Nybbler 's claims are true, in which case I remain eager to see their evidence. If neither claim is true, then I would be very curious to know how they arrived at these conclusions. I anticipate that the likely issue is feeding inaccurate premises into the system, which can befall anyone and is not a personal failing. You don't always know what you don't know after all. In either case, I hope I've shed light on just how easy quickly googling shit can be (I swear I am not sponsored by the search engine company).
Edit1: @DradisPing helpfully pointed me to the case of Timothy Louis Hale-Cusanelli. As further explained in my post below, I think this is someone @anti_dan can plausibly argue was "held without bail for wandering in", but not "without them even proving that you knew it was illegal to be there".
Edit2: @JarJarJedi had a solid response and pointed out Karl Dresch and Michael Curzio to which I responded to below. Both were indeed "held without bail for wandering", although arguably they knew it was illegal to be there.
There's a website dedicated to collecting info, https://americangulag.org/
This is a good resource that is easy to navigate and with plenty of links, but I'd just be cautious about accepting their summaries at face-value. Their page on Timothy Louis Hale-Cusanelli simply says "The government indicates Hale shares his political viewpoints on YouTube." which is a surprisingly terse way to describe someone whose schtick was to dress up as Hitler and make videos about how we should finish the job he started.
You're pounding on the table here, counselor. Dressing up as Hitler is protected expressive activity under the First Amendment, not a valid reason to hold someone without bail.
I agree! You appear to be refuting a position you seem to have made up. I said exactly this already:
The only reason I brought up Hale's facial hair preference was a comment on American Gulag's summary. The site didn't have to say anything at all about Hale's YouTube channel. The fact that they tried to describe his Hitler cosplay and "The Jews" rants as just a guy "sharing his political viewpoints on YouTube" makes me think they're intentionally trying to obfuscate and mislead people.
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That guy looks like a vile racist, a Nazi and a scumbag. But as the current government sees pretty much everybody to the right of Joe Biden as a vile racist, a Nazi and a scumbag - and certainly people who are not bound by the confines of what you can and can not say in official position are making it very clear that that's exactly what they think (not that the President himself feels inhibited from calling his opponents semi-fasicsts either - but at least he stops halfway there, right?). So if we say "it's OK to hold people in jail, in solitary confinement, for half a year pre-trial for something like walking around in a wrong place and arguing with a cop - but only if they are Nazi scumbags", then this would apply to many more people than those who supported it originally thought.
I already said that Hale's political opinions should have absolutely no bearing on how he's treated by the legal system. Please notice that what you're responding to was only addressing American Gulag's needlessly obfuscating summary of Hale's YouTube channel.
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In the Politico link, I see:
Karl Dresch August 4, 2021 Parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building No Six months incarceration; $1,000 fine 6 months (time served)
That means, this person served 6 months in prison by August 4, i.e. out of 7 months between Jan 6 and Aug 4, spent at least 6 in jail. I am not sure what was the bail status and how exactly it happened, but it seems to me that the situation is pretty similar to being held without bail for 6 months. As we see, the charge is "parading", i.e. in non-lawyer-speak, wandering about. So, I am not sure how it plays out against DC Court decision, but I see that we have at least one person that spent behind bars almost all the time until sentencing, and there's no charge above what essentially is "walking around". Then we also have:
Michael Curzio July 12, 2021 Parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building No Six months incarceration (time served) 6 months (time served) N/A N/A N/A Carl Nichols
Again, the charge is "parading", 6 months, time served, but on July 12. There's no way for this person to server 6 months by July 12 unless they actually spent all the time between being apprehended soon after Jan 6, and July 12, behind bars. Again, I have no idea how it plays against other court decisions, I just am looking at the first page of the link you provided.
This is a solid response. You took the time to examine a resource I linked to but used it in a way I didn't consider by unearthing past cases. You are absolutely correct about both Karl Dresch and Michael Curzio, they were indeed held without bond for wandering in.
Dresch is someone whose case I wrote about a while back but I completely forgot about it. That his release was unconditionally denied was not surprising, the guy had "escape from law enforcement" felonies and he was twice caught with guns he wasn't supposed to have.
Curzio was not accused of any violence, the government complains that he "cursed" at officers. What likely sunk him is that he was convicted of attempted 1st degree murder in Florida and was released in early 2019 after 8 years behind bars. It definitely reflects poorly on his decision-making ability that he travels from Florida to DC to be on the frontlines of a riot just a couple of years after getting out of prison.
But the reasons why both were denied release are orthogonal to @anti_dan 's original claim. anti_dan can squarely make this claim about both cases and I would have no objections.
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Thank you for doing the legwork (I'm assuming you did :D, too lazy to verify).
Didn't Mark Twain say something like "It's not the things you don't know that get you, it's the things you know and are wrong"?
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In a more serious country, "insurrection" is made with guns and explosives, not a bunch of demonstrators with placards and megaphones, who are polite enough to stay between the plush ropes while ostensibly overthrowing the constitutional order. Of course, the correct explanation of this that there was no any "insurrection" and any talk about "insurrection" is a partisan talking point which is not to be taken seriously by anybody who wants to approach the matter with a minimal amount of critical thinking instead of just parroting the party propaganda.
Even if they had, that wouldn't have been an insurrection, it would just be some sort of constitutional rules-lawyering.
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I think it's (a) impossible to know (how many is many? did they all think the same thing?) and (b) irrelevant, as whatever anybody were thinking, there clearly was nothing resembling "insurrection" even a tiny bit, and a lot of things looking exactly like all the occupation-protests we've had before. Except one thing - it was the very first time Trumpists were doing it. And that's what made it "insurrection".
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Did you make the same argument about the BLM rioters that tried to push down the White House fence? You know the one's who famously were not tracked down via phone data geotargeting, thousands of hours running facial recognition algorithms and a massive social media snitch-rewarding campaign? To the wall with them!
Pro-Putin and anti-Putin rallies are treated differently because Russia is a corrupt government ruled by an autocrat who has no interest in democracy. Are you claiming that the United States is as well?
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BLM claims that the American elite upholds structural racism.
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This seems to be a weird combination of two worldviews. Who says the elites can even do what they claim? Maybe the force of trumpism is something that really does scare them and this process is not lead by magnanimity but because it is the best they can do balancing both their limited powers and a desire to not awaken a populist backlash. They can't even convince people to watch the show hearings they seem very enamored with, why are we assuming they are both able to dictate how punishment happens or unthreatened?
Shhhh...
Plebes are not supposed to apply logic to the claims of "experts", that's just darn unsporting ;-)
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I don't get the point of this. "Don't complain because it could be worse"? That applies to literally everything. Don't complain about losing your job because they could throw you in jail. Don't complain that they shoot dissidents because they could torture them first. Don't complain about torture because they could get your family too.
I don't think regular protestors who got waved into a government buildings by the police should sit around thinking about how lucky they are to be treated more leniently than a failed coup leader in Turkey or Russia.
"Don't complain because it could be worse"? That applies to literally everything." is actually a great life philosophy that will probably lead to you being happier healthier and more fulfilled lol
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"They were punished lightly by almost any historical standard" is worth noting. (but @ "perhaps, in fact, in the kind of country the rioters might dream of creating", J6 rioters were more enthusiastic trump supporting republicans with some Q people, as opposed to altright or 'new right' or neoreactionaries, afaict)
What is worth noting is a simplest trick that somehow people pretend not to notice. The first part of the trick is to call a mundane, and even tame, by comparison with many others, demonstration a "worst act of insurrection since substitute something grand here, like 9/11, or Pearl Harbor, or Civil War, or the murder of John Lennon - anything goes" and then the second part is proclaiming "for such a humongous act of violence, they were treated very lightly, by historical standards". Of course if you first grossly exaggerate what actually happened, and then treat the victims extremely harshly in comparison to what actually happened, but lightly in comparison to your rhetoric, then people who buy into your trick would think you are extremely merciful. But only the people who didn't see through the trick.
In the US, we have had our share of government building and other public space occupations, let alone violent riots with massive property damages. For example:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/thousands-teachers-seize-oklahoma-capitol-building-demand-education/story?id=54201499
https://ucaft.org/content/thousands-march-sacramento-and-occupy-capitol-building-support-education-funding
While it is probably disrupting, there's nothing outrageous in that either - it's a political place, and doing politics there is what it is for. Sometimes it gets a little out of hand, and sometimes law enforcement needs to be called to cool down some overly hot heads, but there's nothing to get apoplectic about. Except, of course, when the Red Tribe does it. Then it's the end of democracy.
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They were punished lightly by the standards of authoritarian countries, but are those standards particularly important or relevant?
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Do I have good news for you!
EDIT: Yes, I get what you 'really' mean: we didn't see a thousand people shot in the face, or bombed like a Philadelphia row house, or burned to death with their families in a religious building, or clobbered with humiliating criminal charges that would have put them in jail for the rest of their lives until their unfortunate plane crash made that whole question of 'guilt' a little moot. The literal gulag states Are Worse (except when you can call them 'serious'?).
I'm a member of the 'don't break the law, fuckos' caucus, at least on matters like this -- I think jail is an appropriate response to breaking into a federal building, and that getting shot in the face is one of those plausible consequences for doing a horror movie impression -- but this sort of analysis leaves me a little lonely. I do not think that 'hey, it's not a Soviet death sentence' would have been an appropriate response to the initial terrorism enhancements for the molotov brooklynites, and I can tell that be no one was doing so here. Throw these people in jail and make the argument that it's appropriate, not that 'hey, we're not Edrogan (if you squint)'.
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I think most of them got light sentences but some were sentenced for over a year and the longest 7 years. I think this lends credence against conspiracy theories. The government, for all its flaws, more or less tries to be impartial. This was the optimal response, and the leadership knows this. Shooting them would have created too many spillover/secondary effects, as history has shown numerous times when a regime goes too far. Turkey's economy only got worse in the years the followed. Prosecuting them sends the necessary message.
This strikes me as delusional.
The disparity in response is painfully obvious to anyone paying attention. A bunch of Democrat backed activists forcedly take control of 6 city blocks through force of arms shooting 2 dozen people and killing three in the process. The media describes it as a "block party" and no charges are filed. A bunch republican backed activists parade without a permit, the media describes it as the greatest threat to the nation since WWII.
I don't believe that anyone outside the most extremely online of extremely online leftist is fooled by this. I think the simpler explanation is that the regime is frightened. The conventional wisdom amongst the blue tribe is that protests don't happen without the approval of the state, that they require top down organization, funding, acquiescence. This is why Anti-fa only operates in cities with progressive DAs. I think that Jan 6 was uniquely terrifying to a lot of folks in power because it falsified this belief. Hence the outsized response.
So...the main difference is competency? How is it in any way viable to have a standard where incompetency is rewarded?
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I wonder about this.
Isn't it possible that the American powers-that-be is just so firmly rooted and secure that it doesn't actually perceive the January 6th rioters as a real threat?
I've wondered about this in the context of the United States having some of the most robust free speech protections in the world. Maybe, they're okay with us saying all of these things not because of some high ideal from the 1700's, but because the current batch of ruling elites feels like they've locked down control so well that the speech of the little guy poses no serious threat to them?
China, Turkey and Russia cracking down on free speech is a sign of weakness, not strength or "seriousness."
It's notable that in times the American powers-that-be are afraid of ideologies, you get things like COINTELPRO happening. Maybe we'll find out about the contemporary version of that program in a few decades when the documents become declassified, or maybe there's no need for COINTELPRO 2.0 because no ideology yet poses a serious risk to the regime.
I'm inclined to agree with this. Enough of a disturbance to Teach A Lesson, but not enough of a threat to whip out the death squads.
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And it's the way he tells ya stuff. Like he's sayin it all nice, but then he's really stickin it to ya - like between the lines.
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So Julie Kelly is the major reporter on the right talking about J6 defendants.
Her articles are here, https://amgreatness.com/author/julie-kelly/
There's an in depth interview with her here, https://rumble.com/v1d0llb-sidebar-with-julie-kelly-and-day-3-bannon-trial-recap-viva-and-barnes-live.html
You might want to jump to about 20 mins in.
Getting specific detailed information together is going to take some time.
Thanks! I watched enough of the stream to hear Kelly mention Timothy Louis Hale-Cusanelli. This guy was indeed held without bail and then sentenced to 48 months in prison after a jury trial. I was very curious about why he was denied bail and why his sentence was so high. His motion for release was litigated around Mar 2021 and the government brief adds some potentially relevant details.
I think the only valid concern the government had was that Hale would try to destroy evidence or intimidate witnesses. He apparently was frantically trying to delete all his accounts and also dispose of clothing from that day and a flag pole used a javelin. Hale worked at a naval weapons center and had a security clearance, but his coworkers said they feared retaliation from reporting his antics because he was "crazy", probably because he would regularly show up to work in a Hitler mustache and make jokes about the holocaust.
Beyond that though, the government brief spends several pages describing how awful his politics are. I think that's protected speech that should have no bearing on whether he is released, but unsympathetic defendants make bad laws, and this guy sounded especially unstable and unhinged. The government successfully argued that his enthusiastic talk about "civil war" (see starting pg 19) should be considered in context of his clear Nazi political ideology.
But the reasons he was denied bail are largely orthogonal to the original issue I raised. Even a charitable reading of the statement of facts filed against him by the government doesn't really accuse him of engaging in violence on J6, but apparently "coordinating" other rioters to advance and also cussing at police officers. I think @anti_dan can plausibly argue that Hale was someone "held without bail for wandering in" but not "without them even proving that you knew it was illegal to be there".
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Has there been any similar case in the past decade where so many peaceful protestors were hunted down by the FBI in the hundreds (aiming for virtually 100% of people who entered a building)? If not, this demonstrates that the class of people involved in the protest are being treated especially harshly. We’re talking about people who entered into the foyer of a building (BLM in some cases blocked necessary infrastructure). We can’t do an apples to apples comparison when the FBI has uniquely labeled an entire orchard bad apples, ignoring bad apples in other orchards.
Entering technically made it a crime , which is pretty lame but that is the law . Apparently almost 1000 people entered . The FBI outsourced some of the investigation to outsiders to compile footage.
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Why? Its the Capitol, probably the MOST legitimate place to protest in the entire nation. It is also oft open to the public. Or at least was prior to covid. In many cases on that day the relevant barricades were unmanned, and notably the Capitol police did not close and lock the door. Basically every protestor not in the vanguard would have had no indicia that the building was closed to the public at that time.
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Why would a reasonable person think that? Other state capitol buildings, e.g. Wisconsin, were occupied for lengthy periods by people conducting protest activities, with all their rights to do so protected.
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How many people who protested in the Capitol during the Kavanaugh nomination faced criminal charges and nationwide Federal manhunts?
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Typically it's just a misdemeanor with a fine on the order 50USD.
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I don't think the harsh penalties are the ones whose cases have been decided, rather it's the ones who are awaiting trial without bond. Zachary Alam is charged with using a helmet to break a window inside the capital building (in the entrance to the speaker's office or lobby) valued at $1,000 and related charges. He's been held without the option to post bail for nearly 2 years. Megan Fuller, Alma Raven-Guido, and Elijah A. Roach are 3 examples of people charged with serious crimes like arson, felony burglary and others in Portland who were released without posting any bail.
That's an enormous difference in harshness, even if that's the nicest jail in the world.
I appreciate that you included specific names! The window you're referring to Zachary Alam breaking with a helmet was at the Speaker's Lobby doorway, the exact same window Ashli Babbitt immediately tried to jump through before getting shot. So when I asked about defendants who are held without bail for "wandering in", obviously Alam's case does not qualify and you knew that.
You can also skim through the government's brief for some of the reasons he was denied release. They were concerned he was a flight risk, because immediately after J6 he changed his phone number, cleared out his storage unit, and fled to another state. When he was finally arrested, he was driving a vehicle he never registered and had multiple stolen license plates. He also has a history of using multiple fake names and was caught with multiple ID cards. His to-do list that included buying crypto and stashing a burner phone probably didn't help. Then of course, when he's in jail and talking on a recorded phone line, he's asking people if they talked to the FBI. The brief goes on and on.
Regardless, I think pretrial release should be the presumptive default, even for extreme flight risks like Alam.
I actually didn't know what wandering in meant. Those are the people who I believe are being punished far in excess of their actual crimes so perhaps I agree with you.
I am less offended at his bail condition than the volume of people in Portland and prior riots released without posting any bond. I'd have no issue with dumbasses (and Zach's antics qualify, imho) being held, but a dumbass who intentionally torches a building should also be held or at least be posting a large bond.
Earnest question but what do you think the purpose of pretrial detention should be?
My preference would be that almost everyone posts some sort of bond, scaling with mostly seriousness of the charges.
Pretrial detention should be for those who don't post a bond, or those whose charges are so serious or frequent they represent a danger to the public (is if there's a greater than 10% chance someone commits another crime while on bond, I'd prefer they be held until their trial).
How does posting bond make someone less dangerous? I know the putative argument is that people are encouraged to be on good behavior on pain of forfeiting their bond, but I haven't seen good evidence this actually works. Bail companies exist and they can front the full amount in exchange for paying 10%, and if you have Fuck You levels of money you can just post bond and jet set to the Philippines or whatever. For those who can't afford it, do you have any concerns about making liberty conditional on wealth?
I would if I thought that was what is actually happening with bail. Instead I think it represents community trust and contributions in all but the most extreme cases (failsons being an example).
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Those who are likely to reoffend should be held in pretrial detention without the ability to post a bond, for the protection of the citizens. The first goal of pretrial detention should be to prevent as many cases like Darrel Brooks, who was arrested and charged and released actively awaiting two trials and then went on to commit 76 more crimes including 6 murders, as posssible.
I'm all for surrending passports being part of the bond, and scailing bond requirements with wealth as a secondary factor that can increase bonds. But I think the primary factor should be the seriousness of the charges. No one charged with any felony should be released without posting a bond of some sort, certainly not federal arson (it carrying a 5 year minimum sentence and I believe it should bring a fairly substantial bond).
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Yes, but I'd take making liberty conditional on wealth over making it conditional on the court's subjective opinion of how much of a risk I am which is almost certainly going to be contaminated by assumptions about my immutable characteristics. If it is conditional on wealth, I can at least try to acquire wealth to mitigate those concerns. What do I do to mitigate "Your demographic is more risky, tough luck."?
You can't acquire wealth from jail
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You appear to have missed, for instance, the case of the QAnon Shaman himself, sentenced to 41 months for nothing more than "obstructing an official proceeding", a charge which if applied as widely would certainly apply to any protestors whose actions resulted in delay of any proceeding they were protesting. Of course, since technically this isn't merely "trespassing", it doesn't qualify; I fully admit you are a better lawyer than me and will always be able to find a wording by which the actions against the January 6 rioters look perfectly in line with the actions against left-wing rioters, or which somehow distinguish the actions those left-wing rioters from those of the right-wing ones. Yet.... eppur si muove
I remain intensely curious as to how you arrived at your original position, especially since you appear to have asserted it with some measure of confidence by claiming there were "many" such examples. Is it now reasonable to conclude your assertion was not based in fact? What is your best guess for why you nevertheless adopted this belief? I think these are relatively straightforward questions so I don't understand your apparent reluctance in answering.
I have already told you that I accept that you are a better lawyer than I am; if I try to play along you can likely twist me in knots. Your tactics are effective, if not original; making a new top post when a few too many inconvenient objections appeared on your older one was a nice touch. If I may engage in a similar sort of thing you are trying here, it appears that your reasons for posting these sorts of things are to put forth the notion that the January 6 rioters were not treated in an unusually harsh way, particularly compared to BLM rioters, that they deserved what they got, and to spread some doubt upon some of the obvious indicia that this is not the case.
I don't have any superpowers. There's nothing Herculean about saying "Yes my original position was based on false premises, I adopted those false premises because of X, Y, & Z". I don't get why you're so resistant, as you're not even challenging the premise of my question. Neither you nor anyone else has tried to defend the original "many" claim with fact, so why not just admit it was wrong? It's not a personal failing. I too sometimes hold erroneous beliefs, and it's ok when people call me out on it.
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I appreciate the kind words but I don't have any superpowers and what I did wasn't special. My real-world experience does give me some anchors and generalized awareness, but what I did above just boiled down to googling. If I make an argument that is unsupported by the evidence, I think anyone has the power to demonstrate that. I can't claim that how the J6 defendants are treated is "perfectly in line" with left-wing rioters. I do think it's a reasonable conclusion, but I remain open to evidence demonstrating otherwise.
Regarding Q Shaman, I personally think 41 months is an unconscionable amount of prison time, especially one without even the trial tax applied, and especially given what seem to be clear mental health issues. But your original claim was much more expansive than just the Q Shaman. You said:
So I remain very curious to know how you arrived at this belief. Pointing out that the person who was most visibly at the center of the riot got a ridiculously high prison sentence is not going to be representative of the rest of the participants, most of whom did indeed commit no worse than trespassing. So how did you arrive at the claim that "many" of those trespassing were getting "harsh punishments"? Do you still hold this belief? Where did this belief come from?
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Was the substitution of what Angeli (the QAnon Shaman) did with what he plead to in a plea deal deliberate or just ignorant?
Edit:
For reference, Angeli was charged with:
Civil Disorder; Obsrtuction of an Official Proceeding; Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building; Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building; Violent Entry and Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building; Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building.
For "reference", he wasn't convicted of those. Prosecutors routinely toss in bogus charges to force suspects to plea to a charge.
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From what I can see Mr. Chansley suffered from placing himself front and center. I’d guess inciting others made the difference, but it could also be because of his ambiguous spear.
I think section 1505 is limited to Congress or it’s subcommittees, though it’s possible that it covers all Departments. If the latter is true, I’d expect the government to have charged far more people with this.
All in all, I don’t find the single longest sentence, directed at the single most prominent participant, to be convincing proof of “many of the rioters” getting such punishment.
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I thought of it more like performance art personally. that is to say I think he knew what he was doing and I enjoyed the show.
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