When the FBI prepared on the eve of the 2020 presidential election for possible violence in case of a disputed election, it made no distinction between left and right-wing groups when it recommended prosecutions to deter illegal activity.
Yet, months later, there was a disparity in how the FBI, the Justice Department, and local prosecutors were treating illegal activity during the breach of the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, compared to the summer of 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
An FBI memo reported on by Just the News earlier this week shows the bureau’s Boston office led a tabletop exercise and culled open-source intelligence on the potential for violence from both left-leaning anarchists to right-leaning extremists. It recommended relying on undercover informants and aggressive prosecutions for minor crimes to keep tabs on potentially violent groups and deter them.
90% of 2020 BLM protesters were not jailed, but 84.6% of J6 rioters convicted
The document raises new questions for congressional investigators about why the bureau failed to heed its own warnings ahead of the Capitol riot and whether it provides further evidence there was a double standard in federal prosecutions.
News outlets have reported for years on the fact that a vast majority of cases against protesters who broke the law during the fiery and violent summer of 2020 were dropped, especially by localities. A 2021 analysis from The Guardian found that this happened in about 90% of cases across a dozen U.S. jurisdictions that experienced protests.
In Houston, one of the epicenters of protests in Texas, about 93% of all charges brought were dropped, The Guardian reported. This is despite the fact that the demonstrators blocked a federal highway, threw objects at police officers, and damaged buildings. Eight officers were also injured. In Philadelphia, where protesters smashed windows, looted stores, and set fire to police cars, at least 95% of the arrests resulted in no prosecutions or dropped charges.
Many of these cases were handled by local prosecutors. In the more than 300 federal cases brought against those involved in the protests, fewer than half pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, the Associated Press found.
Conversely, more than 1,500 individuals were arrested in connection with the Capitol riot, resulting in 1,270 total convictions–making that outcome about 80% of the cases–on the eve of President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardon last year. That comes out to about 86%.
Federal prosecutors also used a controversial statute that allowed them to prosecute some of those who were charged with obstructing an official proceeding for interrupting the Jan. 6 congressional certification of the electoral college vote. The statute was also used in some of the charges levied against President Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith in his case arguing Trump was directly responsible for the violence that day.
That interpretation of the statute, which Republicans often pointed to as evidence of the double standard of aggressive prosecutions, was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2024. The high court ruled that the law only applied when a defendant prevented the use of “records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding.”
Hellbound and Down 