(WatchDogReport.org) – Former US Attorney General Bill Barr recently said that the Justice Department cast its net “far too broadly” on prosecuting the rioters who were part of the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. During an interview with Fox News, Barr told host Neil Cavuto that, just like everything that “the left does,” the DOJ went “too far.”
Barr, who served as an attorney general for former Presidents Donald Trump and George H.W. Bush, pointed out that he does believe that the Capitol riots were one of the worst moments that the United States’s democracy has ever experienced. He pointed out that while those who were involved in the riots by attacking the police and breaking their way into the Capitol should be prosecuted, the DOJ went too far by hounding people who only wanted to hang around.
The former attorney general also told Cavuto that even when he believed that the riots were a “tragedy” and claimed he didn’t want to “minimize” the incident, he explained that what happened on January 6, 2021, wasn’t an “insurrection.” However, Barr explained that the incident represented a “shameful episode” that Americans should always remember, and said that some of the people involved should face legal consequences.
So far, nearly 1,000 rioters have either pleaded guilty or been formally convicted of different crimes ranging from misdemeanors like trespassing to felonies like assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy. Various media outlets have reported that over 1,200 people have been formally charged with federal crimes for the riots, which many Democratic leaders have labeled as an “insurrection.”
In what some journalists have described as the largest criminal investigation in US history, prosecutors are still asking for the public’s cooperation to identify at least 80 suspects. On January 4, a federal court ruled that those rioters who were “passive” during the attacks could be legally convicted of disorderly conduct. Many legal analysts claimed the decision could set a dangerous precedent.
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