Washington – Michael Sherwin, the outgoing Acting District Attorney for the District of Columbia who led the investigation into the assault on the Capitol, said Sunday that evidence suggests they could possibly press charges of sedition against some of the suspects.
“I think the facts support those charges, and I think that as we move forward, more facts will support that,” he said in an interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes program.
According to the law, in the US sedition occurs when someone forcibly opposes the country’s authority, or alters or forcibly delays the execution of any law. This crime includes a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Sherwin noted that he personally believes that the evidence they have is heading toward that kind of accusation.
On Donald Trump’s role in the assault, Sherwin was ambiguous. “It is clear that Trump was the magnet that attracted people to the District of Columbia on January 6. Now the question is whether he is criminally guilty of everything that happened during the siege, during the irruption,” he said.
In that sense, he explained that there are detainees who affirmed that they attacked the Capitol because the then president asked them to recover Congress, although there are also members of the militias who have pointed out that Trump simply limited himself to speaking and that they did what he would not do. never.
Even so, Sherwin stressed that investigators are carrying out investigations into the role played by the former president.
For now, the authorities have indicted 400 people with criminal charges at the federal level, which can carry penalties of between 5 and 20 years in prison.
Sherwin said that at least 80% of those accused are people who besieged the Capitol, while there are a hundred suspected of having attacked police officers.
Federal authorities are investigating whether former Trump allies such as Roger Stone and Alex Jones played any role in the violent assault on the Capitol, according to NBC News.
Likewise, there are 10% of the cases, which he describes as “more complex conspiracy”, related to far-right groups such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, who came with a plan.
“We don’t really know what the plan was, if it was to come to DC and organize and break into the Capitol in some way,” he said.
Sherwin led the criminal investigation of those events until this Friday, as he leaves the position to occupy another position in the Department of Justice, and will be replaced by the acting prosecutor for the District of Columbia, Channing Phillips.
On January 6, a mob of supporters of former US President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol when a joint session of the two houses of Congress was held to ratify the victory of Democrat Joe Biden in the November elections.
The breakthrough came after Trump delivered a speech from the White House in which he encouraged his supporters to march on Capitol Hill.