The acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia on Friday said there is no “direct evidence” suggesting that rioters who breached the Capitol last week were planning to kidnap or kill lawmakers.
Arizona prosecutors previously said that “Qanon shaman” Jacob Chansey, seen wearing horns and shirtless in the Senate chamber, allegedly left a note saying that “it’s only a matter of time, justice is coming.” They further stipulated “strong evidence, including Chansley’s own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government.”
Sherwin said the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. is leading the effort to prosecute those who breached the Capitol, but he said there might have been a “disconnect” on the evidence in the cases.
“We need to work with other districts to not only find these people but have initial appearances in districts across the United States,” Sherwin continued. “There were appearances in two districts, I believe you’re making reference to, I believe Texas and Arizona, and at some of those hearings, there were other prosecutors — that may be a disconnect, that may be adding information that’s not directly related to what we have.”
The prosecutor further noted that “we have specialized prosecutors here working with specialized counterterrorism investigators looking at these type of organizations for these most egregious acts.”
Sherwin then again stressed that prosecutors “don’t have any direct evidence of kill-capture teams.”
Neither the Arizona U.S. attorney’s office nor Sasse issued public comments after Sherwin’s comments to reporters Friday.
FBI official Steven D’Antuono on Friday called on suspects who were linked to the breach to turn themselves in.
The Justice Department in separate court filings said that social media network Parler, which was de-platformed by Big Tech companies following the Capitol breach, helped identify Eduard Florea, the person behind an account where a number of threats originated relating to elected officials and last week’s violence at the Capitol.
“Our National Guard soldiers and airmen are set around the city to protect our nation’s Capital,” National Guard Bureau Chief Army Gen. Daniel Hokanson said in the statement.