‘Deck chairs on the Titanic’: How Trump already upended DOJ’s ongoing efforts to arrest and prosecute January 6 rioters

President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t been sworn in yet, but his looming return has already upended hundreds of pending prosecutions against his supporters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and has disrupted the ongoing effort to arrest more rioters.

President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t been sworn in yet, but his looming return has already upended hundreds of pending prosecutions against his supporters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and has disrupted the ongoing effort to arrest more rioters. The historic effort by Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents to investigate the deadly Trump-inspired storming of the Capitol has led to more than 1,570 arrests in nearly all 50 states, making it the largest criminal probe in American history. New arrests are slowly still trickling in, four years later, including recent cases against a member of the Proud Boys and a rioter who tried to stab police with a flagpole. But the political reality has already tanked morale inside the Justice Department division that handles these cases — and is hampering efforts to secure guilty pleas in about 300 pending cases, as defendants balk at negotiations, according to a federal law enforcement official involved in the sprawling investigation. The official also said investigators have decided to use their limited time and resources to go after January 6 fugitives suspected of attacking police, meaning lower-level rioters who breached the Capitol but didn’t contribute to the violence will likely never be charged or held accountable. Much — if not all — of that work will likely be undone once Trump assumes power later this month and fulfills his campaign promise to grant presidential pardons to Capitol rioters. “Sometimes, it feels like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,” the official said.