Capital punishment: Top DC prosecutor brought hundreds of Jan. 6 charges while declining to prosecute some city violence
By
Ashley Oliver
March 13, 2024 6:15 am
U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves’s tough-on-crime approach to defendants involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach has continued to capture national headlines, as have violent crime rates in Washington, D.C., which soared under his watch last year.
The juxtaposition has invited criticisms of Graves, who was appointed by President Joe Biden to serve as Washington’s chief prosecutor in 2021.
Graves announced this month his office had brought charges against more than 1,300 defendants involved in the Jan. 6 riot since 2021. He has secured convictions through plea deals or jury trials for most of them. The charges have ranged from minor trespassing violations to rare seditious conspiracy felonies.
One Graves critic, Andy McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and conservative legal analyst, said the Department of Justice “would ordinarily not charge” minor infractions like it has against hundreds of these defendants.
“As dictated by the Biden DOJ, the D.C.-USAO has pressed these cases in the service of the Democrats’ political hyperbole, which ludicrously portrays the Capitol riot as on a historic par with 9/11 and Pearl Harbor” McCarthy said.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2917716/top-dc-attorney-jan-6-charges-declining-prosecute-other-crimes/
