Six days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, an FBI representative and the acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Michael Sherwin, finally came to give a press briefing on the ongoing investigations. It was … not very satisfactory. As former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe pointed out on CNN immediately afterward, this level of event should draw a briefing from top FBI leadership, not the assistant director in charge of the Washington field office and an acting U.S. attorney.
Steven D’Antuano, the aforementioned FBI official, spewed law enforcement cliches with aplomb but offered basically zero information. Sample: “We are up to the challenge. As Director Wray says, we do not do easy.” They will “leave no stone unturned.” Etc.
Sherwin was mildly more informative, offering the assurance that in many cases where we’re hearing about very minor charges, often misdemeanors, being brought against rioters, those are the easy initial charges to bring that allow for arrests, and more serious charges may follow. Sherwin emphasized the huge range of criminal behavior on January 6 at the Capitol, saying that charges including seditious conspiracy and felony murder are on the table. Sherwin also confirmed that the pipe bombs found outside the DNC and RNC were “real devices.”
Both men emphasized that more than 160 case files have been opened since January 6, and, again, Sherwin did repeatedly say that serious crimes are under investigation. But far more questions went unanswered than were answered. One big one: D’Antuano insisted that the FBI had, acted on, and shared intelligence about planned violence, but offered notably few specifics, let alone an answer to what went wrong. Asked about the indications that some of the rioters were planning to take hostages, D’Antuano had little to say but “We are looking at all angles.” Thanks, guy.
The spoken message of this press conference was that we should be confident that the FBI and Justice Department have got this and can be trusted to fully investigate and prosecute. But the six-day wait for this much information and the relatively low-level personnel sent out to offer it suggest otherwise. With serious threats of further violence, they need to do better.