- On January 6th, 2021, a violent mob stormed the US capitol, seeking to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.

While our attention has been consumed with things like the pandemic, vaccines and America's withdrawal from Afghanistan, today's guest reminds us that the investigations into the events of that day and the prosecutions of those responsible are just beginning.

He's Scott McFarland this week on Story in the Public Square.

(relaxed music) Hello, and welcome to A Story in the Public Square.

I'm Jim Ludes from The Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

And I'm G. Wayne Miller with The Providence Journal.

Each week, we talk about big issues with great guests, journalists, authors, scholars, and more, to make sense of the big stories shaping public life in the United States today.

This week we're joined by investigative reporter, Scott McFarland.

If you live in the greater Washington D.C. area, you know him from Channel 4, the NBC affiliate there, but others may have seen him on MSNBC, CNBC and elsewhere reporting on the January 6th prosecutions.

Scott, thank you so much for being with us.

- Good to be here Jim and Wayne.

- We, we've been admiring your reporting on the January 6th prosecutions.

And you know, for those who maybe need a little bit reminder, let's just start with what basically happened on January 6th.

- Rhetorically, that's actually a difficult question, Jim, because we don't know, or at least it hasn't been specified by prosecutors, whether this was an organic moment that just seemed to happen or whether it was somebody's singular idea to breach the Capitol, attempt to kill elected leaders and wreak havoc.

So we're somewhere in between those two extremes.

Here's what we know, that hundreds of people have already been charged as federal defendants for playing some role in the US Capitol breach.

Be it assault, conspiracy, plotting, and planning, what equipment to bring, what communications devices to carry, damaging things or in a large number of cases, simply being there, unlawfully on the grounds as part of a number of people in a mob that clearly outnumbered police.

We know we're closer to the starting line than the finish line of the prosecution and potentially of the investigation.

In the first eight to nine months after January 6th, about 10% of those charged, pleaded guilty.

Which means 90% still have to have their cases adjudicated.

And in those cases, perhaps come some answers as to whose idea was this, what specifically triggered the breach and exactly what happened inside?

- Do you, I know from your reporting the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask it anyways.

Do you use the term insurrection in talking about January 6th?

- So that's it, that's, becoming a political wedge issue, isn't it?

- [Jim] Yeah - Insurrection is now almost like a Rorschach test between Trump supporters and those who view what happened January 6th, as an attempted overthrow of government.

Insurrection comes up in court filings.

Insurrection is in black and white in some part of this investigation or some part of these cases, so it's hard to avoid using the term as a reporter.

But, I'll note in the months since early 2021, insurrection is now kind of a, a hot button phrase, but we can say, without equivocation, that there were people in the Capitol complex, according to prosecutors who were saying, yelling, or trying to hang Mike Pence.

I, I've almost, almost lost count the number of defendants who are accused of either vulgar or violent words about Nancy Pelosi.

There were police officers hit with the following weapons: baseball bat, hockey stick, sharpened flagpole, chemical spray, steel-toed boots, tomahawk, ax, knife.

These are the things people brought on the campus that day, according to prosecutors.

So we can debate politically the term we want to use for this, but this was a holy hell fire that happened January 6th.

- So some of those people also, and you've cited in FBI report to this effect in your reporting.

Some of those people also had body armor, they had military grade backpacks, they had helmets.

It does, does that seem like people who came to protest or demonstrate or do something more?

- I'll give you more.

There are people who brought at least, at least one person, Wayne, who's accused of bringing a tourniquet.

Where do you bring a tourniquet?

You bring a tourniquet to where you expect there to be a lot of blood or possible loss of limb.

Yeah, that's an important specification in the charging documents prosecutors have given us so far.

Defendants who were accused of coming with gloves, goggles, helmets.

Why did they bring that specific equipment?

In a granular way, Wayne, that became important in the first felony case to go to sentencing January 6th.

It was otherwise a lower level case.

A defendant from Florida, who pleaded guilty over the summer to the first felony, he was accused of being inside the Senate Chamber, January six, pleaded guilty, was sentenced to eight months in prison.

Part of the legal filings back and forth, prosecutors specified and said it was important that he had gloves.

That he went in there ready for something.

They didn't say exactly what but the equipment he brought was specified.

And clearly as an important component to this, their prosecutors are trying to make clear to everyone that people who brought gear with them were not there for a peaceful protest.

- You know, I, I've covered many, many demonstrations in my years at The Providence Journal, the, with hundreds of people, thousands of people, many different issues.

The only time I ever saw people wearing military grade equipment was when the Proud Boys came outside of the State Capitol a couple of years ago.

So, you know, to me that, that says something.

Were any, you talked about some of the arms that people carried.

Were there guns, did any people carry guns, either on the grounds or into the Capitol?

- According to Federal Agents.

Yeah.

Multiple people had guns.

And I underscore that point because there was a statement from a political leader earlier this year that this didn't seem like a quote, armed insurrection, the FBI and the US Attorney's Office, have been clear.

They think people were armed and they have evidence of it.

There's a man from Dallas, who is specifically charged in January 6th, with transporting a firearm in furtherance of civil disorder.

It's a gun charge.

They say he brought a gun with him from Texas to D.C. that day and was carrying it, all in the mob.

There's another defendant who was accused of having 11 Molotov Cocktails in his pickup truck on Capitol Hill and was accused of being part of the mob.

They say he had guns as well.

Defendant from Maryland was among the first, if not the first, to be charged with carrying a gun January 6th.

Yeah, they say there were guns that doesn't count all the makeshift weapons.

And in one of the ones that just seems most impactful and the one that comes up most commonly, is the chemical spray, the bear spray.

Not only did it desecrate, what I would consider to be hallowed ground, the Capitol complex, with stains and, and, and, and, and, and fill the air.

But it was obviously consequential to the police and to others in the mob that day that may have been the most dispersed and ultimately the largest scale weapon use that day.

- So Scott, one of the, one of the pieces of the story that, that you've reported on and there's been other reported on, is the, the, the discovery of pipe bombs on Capitol Hill prior to the, the, the mob assembly at the Capitol.

What do we know about the story?

What, if anything, can we draw from it?

- I believe it's the most under-reported element of what happened January 5th and January 6th, the FBI has said two pipe bombs were left.

One outside Republican National Committee Headquarters, one outside Democratic National Committee Headquarters, on January 5th, that evening.

Let's put everything else aside.

It's in a vacuum.

Let's just consider that.

Somebody put two live, active, destructive pipe bombs, outside the national party headquarters and we don't know who it is.

Everything else aside, pretty important story, something we need to doggedly pursue, but it's actually even more important than that because those pipe bombs, according to police were an effective diversion of police at just the worst possible moment.

They were discovered shortly before 1:00 PM, according to internal emails we've obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Police threw up a bunch of red flags and obviously marshaled some resources toward that, just as the mob was approaching.

The police chief for Washington, D.C. has said those would have been very destructive if they went off and they forced the evacuation of buildings, including the Libraries of Congress, the, the two Library of Congress buildings, the Cannon House Office Building, just as the mob was approaching.

What an effective diversion as a Capitol riot was about to begin.

- So you say, we don't know who placed them.

I'm assuming that the investigation of that, the FBI is continuing to look into who placed those there and is that true?

A and B, is there any progress in that direction that you know of?

- So just, just to be clear, the FBI hasn't said it's arrested anyone, Wayne, the FBI hasn't announced a suspect, but here's what the FBI has done as summer ended, put up new videos, seeking new tips, trying to get more people to call in and report what they knew.

So, give us some ideas, give us some suggestions, give us some leads.

That indicates they don't have their person yet.

And that's alarming on multiple levels.

Alarming because again, this could be somebody who's act was synthesized with other bad actors on January 6th.

There could have been, a part of a conspiracy.

What's more, the Capitol Hill neighborhood is just that, Wayne, it's a neighborhood Those pipe bombs weren't inside marble, you know hallways.

It's next to houses and playgrounds and schools and families.

So there's alarm among people who live in that area that they haven't figured out the person to try to put pipe bombs on their street.

Could that person act again, but also is this going to trigger copycats?

Because we've already seen that this year, Jim and Wayne, we saw of course, January 6th, then in April, we saw a deadly attack where the car, I guess the Capitol Police Officer at a security checkpoint.

Then August 19th, we saw a man accused of having a who, who said he had an explosive in his truck, accused of engaging in a bomb threat that forced the evacuation of those same buildings and shuttered Capitol Hill for hours.

Then as the summer was ending, we had a person arrested again near Democratic National Committee Headquarters.

This time police say with a machete, a two foot, bladed machete in his truck and a swastika painted on it.

Is this the new normal on Capitol Hill?

Are people now going to more forcefully and fiercely threaten the Capitol complex?

In a series of incidents that started January 5th, the placement of pipe bombs.

- Scott, you know, I, history literature, there are lots of different examples of groups using the mob to mask the movements of either individuals or small groups of people.

And one of the things that struck me, and I know it's struck other observers of the events of January 6th was the apparent movement of men in tactical military gear through the mob in a very purposeful manner.

Have you heard, in your reporting, anything about what those groups may have been doing and who they may have actually been?

- Yeah, but that's been, I think at the epicenter of the largest case so far.

The biggest of the January 6th cases is the case against the accused Oath Keepers, an alleged far right group that is accused of plotting and planning ahead of January 6th, of conspiring as to what to bring and how to do this.

The Oath Keepers are accused of using what you just described, Jim, a military stack formation, using not only the tactical gear that Wayne referenced earlier, but doing it in a coordinated, choreographed fashion that has the hallmarks of military, a military going into enemy territory.

They used military stack, according to prosecutors, outside the Capitol complex to breach.

Then, according to the latest court filings, they continued to use a bit of a stack inside the Capitol to traverse the area in there.

These are defendants charged with conspiracy and to make their conspiracy case, among the components of it, Jim, is that prosecutors say they used a military stack with their gear, with their radios, but this case goes further.

This case alleges planning that began weeks ahead, at least days ahead of January 6th through the use of encrypted communication, involves traveling from, in many cases, Florida or elsewhere in the country to Washington D.C., but perhaps most striking, that group, the accused Oath Keepers group is accused of staging and storing guns at a hotel in suburban Ballston, Virginia, outside the city limits of D.C., where the gun laws are real tight, stored them in Ballston, Virginia, to ready them if or when Donald Trump invoked The Insurrection Act, for a second wave, clearly never came to that.

But that element of conspiring to stage guns is also an element of this conspiracy case.

The, the the Oath Keepers case right now is the heart of the action, legally.

Most defendants, five of whom, pleaded guilty by the end of the summer, agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors, agreeing to flip.

And it's a real provocative question, Jim and Wayne, if you've got a top line defendant, the heart of the action, and they're flipping, who are they flipping on?

What are they offering up?

That's why this report, this story, and this case remain remarkably interesting.

- So you've described three groups of defendants from least to most serious.

And maybe you can break those three groups down, starting with least serious people who, unauthorized entry, but did not commit additional crimes.

Maybe you can give us that group and the next two.

- Yeah, it's unofficial, but I, I view three tiers of cases.

Low-tier, mid-tier, high-tier.

Let me flip it, Wayne.

Let me do the high tier first, we were just talking about it.

The accused Oath Keepers, the accused Three Percenters, another far right group, The Proud Boys, you referenced earlier, Wayne, accused far right group.

They're charged with conspiracy.

In some cases, Wayne, they're accused of conspiring and planning as early as November, just after the election, to do some type of act in January to disrupt things.

So that's a top-line group.

In the top tier, I'd also include those accused of particularly ferocious, physical attacks against police.

Chemical spray, hitting with a baseball bat.

The hand to hand, Gothic combat, that occurred.

The mid-tier, it's actually quite curious, the mid-tier will include some people who had some level of assault, could be a lower level assault while on the grounds or maybe some higher level damage, broke something, went into a space they weren't supposed to be in, in particular, like being in the Senate Chamber.

You know, being up against that House Speaker's lobby door, where Ashli Babbitt was shot, as she tried to break through the window.

The mid tier cases are curious because I don't know where they're headed.

We don't see a lot of plea agreements in those cases.

We've only seen one go to sentencing.

It's, it's hard to know how judges are going to go on those cases.

Are they going to go high on the sentences or are they gonna go low on the sentences?

And I referenced that because there's the low-tier of cases, those accused of simply being unlawfully on the grounds, illegally picketing or parading, misdemeanor cases.

We've seen those go to sentencing and largely if not exclusively, those defendants have avoided prison sentences.

They're getting probation or time served in the jail, or they're getting some home confinement or court restrictions.

And that's alarmed some people, to see anyone charged with the January 6th crime, avoid prison.

It's alarmed some people, but these are misdemeanor cases and that's typically how misdemeanor cases are adjudicated in the federal courts.

So those are our three tiers, low-level, mid-level, high-level.

High-level is the heart of the action, legally.

Mid-level though over the next half a year, it could be very interesting to watch, because then we can see how judges view people who were in the Senate Chamber, somebody who smashed a historical artifact, somebody who put hands on a police officer, but maybe didn't conspire or know before January 6th, they were going to create hell, January 6th.

So you want to channel some focus and energy toward those cases too.

- Scott, do you have a sense of, so you mentioned the military tactics that seem to be employed by some of these groups.

Do you have a sense of the prevalence of any active duty military members in, among the defendants or veterans or law enforcement?

- An awful lot of veterans, an awful lot of active duty or, or previous military and a lot of veterans, dozens and dozens.

Active duty military, we have one US Marine Corps Officer, specifically charged.

A man from Virginia, from Quantico, Virginia, a Marine Corps Officer, who's charged with forcing open a door near the police line and a very sensitive moment in a very sensitive space, January 6th.

Military veterans from all across the country.

People who had military ties once in their past.

Law enforcement is an interesting question, Jim.

There is a lot of police, among those charged, to now former, local Virginia police officers, a DEA Agent from California, a Federal Agent, is charged.

A police officer from Chicago, who was, I'm told, put on leave mid-summer or took a leave of absence mid-summer.

There's a lot of law enforcement ties here.

And that strikes a lot of people as distinctive, Jim and Wayne, because this is a crowd that confronted police, that assaulted police, that turned police work into a nightmare, one day in Washington, D.C.. - So you have spoken to some of the defendants and I have not seen your reporting on that nor have I seen anyone's reporting that.

So I'm very intrigued to know what they have said to you.

Have they expressed regret?

What if they said, wait, what were they planning to do?

Are they sorry?

I mean, tell us what you've learned from these people.

You've spoken to.

- I've talked, I've talked to a number of defendants, Wayne, including one who's currently in jail, who calls me from the jailhouse phone.

The defendants who have open cases and are willing to talk to reporters, as you might imagine, are unapologetic and really ready to dig in to say what they did, was in their mind, justified.

Let me tell you about the case of Landon Copeland of southern Utah.

In pre-trial detention, through most of 2021, calls frequently.

Knows that I cover these cases closely and wants to say his piece, wants to speak his mind.

He says, he believes Donald Trump will come back to office soon.

He believes Donald Trump sent him and the others, directed them to be at or in the Capitol, January 6th.

And that because Donald Trump sent them, that it's okay that they were there.

They were directed to be there by the chief executive of the country, even though Congress is a separate branch.

Unapologetic, is how I'd characterize it, Wayne.

There's another defendant named Vigo, Richard Burnett, from Arkansas, who was in the D.C. jail for quite a while in pre-trial detention, but has since been released.

His attorney agreed to let me interview Mr. Burnett, who has a legal defense fund, he's trying to raise money for.

He didn't speak to the specifics of his case perhaps, cause this was a conversation sanctioned by his lawyer, but Burnett gave me some insight as to what life is like inside the jail for the January 6th defendants.

Listen to this, in the D.C. jail, which is about four or five miles from Capitol itself, it's southeast D.C., there's a separate wing where they hold the January 6th defendants and they call it internally, the inmates do, The Patriot Way.

They're segregated from the rest of the population.

I think everybody I've talked to about that thinks it's for the better, because it keeps them, I mean, maybe it reduces any, you know, factional fighting, but nevertheless, in that section of the jail, it's been rife with disciplinary issues, defendants being put in the hole, according to defense lawyer filings.

Only a few of them have even been allowed work details, potentially because of behavior.

They start the day with a singing of The National Anthem and they are together.

They also claim inhuman conditions, in their words, human rights violations because amid COVID, the jail is under large restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus any further.

The Washington D.C. jail doesn't have the best reputation for having functional heat, air, water, all the time in all places.

It's certainly not the Ritz Carlton.

That being said, the January 6th defendants who are being held there, are being held there for committing federal crimes.

And as one former D.C. inmate, a local from Washington D.C., who served time many years ago there, welcome to the club.

That's what life is like in the D.C. jail.

The protests we've seen this summer on behalf of the jailed January 6th defendants, many of them happened outside the jail itself.

So these are people in detention.

Certainly don't mind speaking to reporters, they had very little else to do.

- Scott, there is a select committee in the US House of Representatives that's looking into the events of January 6th.

Well, what, you know, with the, with the criminal prosecutions ongoing, what do you think the big issues that are, that, that, that the Congress and the select committee need to be investigating.

- It's going to be a separate world, Jim.

The criminal prosecution is an investigation of the criminal activities that happened on the grounds, near the grounds, that day, by a set of defendants.

What congress and the select committee can do is take a broader look at what were the conditions that gave rise to those crimes?

What were the vulnerabilities that allowed that to be so impactful?

What vulnerabilities remained provide or present future threats?

So it's a more holistic, more broad and perhaps more of an introspection as to the politics or how the government may have contributed to January 6th.

I talked to one of the January 6th committee members who said, thinking that the committee's work will be wrapped up by the end of the year, is really optimistic, likely will bleed into spring, maybe summer 2022.

And now that's tenuous timing, politically, because I think part of the argument that was made earlier about having a special committee, you know, nonpartisan or bipartisan, a special committee, was to get it wrapped up and done in 2021 before an election year starts.

This select committee I think, is going to have its work go right into the heart of midterm elections.

- So you you've worked on The Hill earlier in your career, you covered Congress, you have, you have, sort of a long view and a broad perspective, put the events of January 6th in that context, if you can, and just give us, where does it fit in terms of what you have covered?

Obviously nothing like it, but give us your perspective on that.

- As somebody who was actually a congressional staffer once and worked in that complex, who you, you know had meetings in the Capitol and walked through the Capitol every day, it is horrific.

And did, I don't think it's an overstatement to say or a hyperbole to say it's sacred space to those who work there.

Not just because of the aesthetics of the beauty, of the history, of the murals, of the marble, but because it's always kind of seemed sacrosanct and it was very much not January 6th.

I found it alarming that my buddies, my, my old drinking buddies were evacuating the Cannon Building, The Cannon House Office Building, because of the horrors that were occurring.

I found it alarming that I, I have buddies there who I know are dads and moms and they're running away for their lives, January 6th.

So it's hard not to have an emotive response.

When I, every time I hear a new detail, read a new court filing about something I hadn't heard before.

The long view is actually quite alarming, Wayne, because it's kind of difficult to run a Congress on the salaries they pay.

You know, it's, it's, you don't go to work for Congress to get rich.

You don't go to work at Congress to easily make your mortgage.

It's, it's, it's a low paying job.

It provides for a great future, but at that moment, it can be difficult.

How much do you want to send your 21-year-old son or daughter to go work there right now, in light of the series of events that have happened this year, the scares, and the, and then the riot?

Is it really an attractive place to go work?

I'm concerned about the long view that this type of event makes public service, even a bigger challenge to, to which to draw the best and the brightest.

- Scott, that is a powerful point for us to leave it on that he, Scott McFarland, his reporting is important and we encourage you to check it out.

That's all the time we have this week, but if you want to know more about Story in the Public Square, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter or visit pellcenter.org where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time, for more Story in the Public Square.

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