Jan. 6 investigation now expanded to pre-riot rally

WASHINGTON — The criminal investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has expanded to examine the preparations for the rally that preceded the riot, as the Justice Department aims to determine the full extent of any conspiracy to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory, according to people familiar with the matter.

In the past two months, a federal grand jury in Washington has issued subpoena requests to some officials in former President Donald Trump’s orbit who assisted in planning, funding and executing the rally, said the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

The development shows the degree to which the Justice Department investigation — which already involves more defendants than any other criminal prosecution in the nation’s history — has moved further beyond the storming of the Capitol to examine events preceding the attack.

The events are a legally fraught puzzle for federal investigators. Prosecutors and FBI agents must distinguish between constitutionally protected First Amendment activity, such as speech and assembly, and the alleged conspiracy to obstruct Congress or other potential crimes connected to fundraising and organizing leading up to Jan. 6.

The task is also complicated by the proximity of those two very different activities — speech and violence — that occurred within hours of each other and less than a mile apart.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington declined to comment.

The morning of Jan. 6, thousands of people from all over the country gathered at the Ellipse, behind the White House, to rally behind the false premise that Trump had won the election. The outgoing president began speaking to the crowd around noon and called on attendees to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. By 12:30, hundreds of people began to gather near Congress. At approximately 1 p.m., the barricaded security perimeter of the Capitol complex was breached, and people flooded toward the building.

The mob stormed forward, with rioters striking officers, smashing windows and pushing their way into legislative offices. Lawmakers fled to safety, delaying the official count of Biden’s electoral victory for hours until order could be restored. More than 100 police officers were injured, many of them seriously.

Prosecutors so far have charged more than 770 people with crimes, and the FBI is seeking information to identify hundreds of additional suspects, including a person who planted pipe bombs outside the Democratic and Republican party headquarters the night before.

Grand jury subpoenas are a legal mechanism used by prosecutors to gather information for a criminal investigation, and a subpoena in and of itself doesn’t mean any particular recipient is under investigation or likely to face charges. But the subpoena demands issued in recent weeks do indicate that the aperture of the investigation has widened, after Attorney General Merrick Garland pledged in a speech this Jan. 5, the day before the first anniversary of the attack, to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

The people familiar with the subpoena demands declined to identify the individuals who had received them or provide additional details.

Garland, who has faced pressure at times from Democrats and others to more aggressively investigate those close to Trump and the events that preceded the attack on Congress, said in his Jan. 5 speech that complex investigations like this one take time and are built from the bottom up.

“We follow the physical evidence. We follow the digital evidence. We follow the money,” Garland said. “But most important, we follow the facts — not an agenda or an assumption. The facts tell us where to go next.”