It’s been two years since rioters stormed the US Capitol to protest the results of the 2020 presidential election, and making sense of all that’s gone on since then can still feel mind-boggling. Yet analyzing what happened in Washington on January 6, 2021, may indeed be a key part of regaining some semblance of control over the US’s fraught political system—and so, below, find a roundup of all the major outcomes of the insurrection, from a head count of those arrested to the ensuing Congressional investigation that placed the majority of the blame on former president Donald Trump.
How many people died during or as a result of the January 6 insurrection?
According to a bipartisan Senate report that was released in June of last year, seven people lost their lives in connection with the January 6 attack on the Capitol; they included four rioters as well as three police officers, only one of whom—Officer Brian D. Sicknick of the Capitol Police—died at the scene of the mob. The other two officers, Jeffrey Smith and Howard S. Liebengood, died by suicide in the days after the attack; two more Metropolitan Police officers, Gunther Hashida and Kyle DeFreytag, also died by suicide in July after the report was filed, but their suicides have not officially been designated as “line of duty deaths” by the Metropolitan Police. On Thursday, Sicknick’s former partner sued Trump and two Capitol rioters, arguing that Sicknick’s death was a “direct and foreseeable consequence” of their roles in the insurrection.
How many arrests have come out of the January 6 attack?
Nearly a thousand people—at last count, at least 978—have been charged in connection with the Capitol insurrection, with the FBI still seeking the public’s help to identify other participants.
How many January 6 rioters have pleaded guilty?
As of now, 465 rioters have pleaded guilty to the crimes they’ve been charged with; those charges include, but are not limited to, parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; theft of government property; and assaulting, resisting, or impeding a law enforcement officer with a dangerous weapon.
What kind of government action has been taken to investigate the events of January 6?
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack was adopted in June of 2020, and its members—including California representative Adam Schiff, Maryland representative Jamie Raskin, and Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, among others—held an 18-month investigation and delivered their final report at the tail end of 2022.
What did the Congressional investigation of January 6 ultimately conclude?
Among other things, that report accused former president Donald Trump of carrying out “a multipart plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election” and recommended that Congress consider whether to bar Trump and his allies from holding office in the future under the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists. “The central cause of January 6 was one man, former president Donald Trump, whom many others followed,” the report said, going on to conclude: “None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.”