The FBI investigates if the assailants planned to take hostages or kill politicians

Jacob Anthony Chansley, who was arrested this Saturday, photographed Wednesday during the assault on the Capitol.SAUL LOEB / AFP

Little by little, the main leaders of the assault on the United States Congress are falling.

First it was Richard Barnett, the vandal who broke into Nancy Pelosi's office.

This Saturday the police arrested Jacob Anthony Chansley, the man who wore a fur hat and horns and his face painted with a flag, and Adam Johnson, famous for taking a lectern.

The FBI is now focused on establishing whether the mob that stormed the Capitol, in addition to creating chaos, intended to take hostages and even kill congressmen and their aides.

If the FBI accepts this line of investigation, it is because, among the many photographs that have come to light after the emergence of the Trumpist mob in Congress, some of the assailants carried plastic ties used to arrest and immobilize by the hands of people.

"We are not treating this as a great conspiracy, but we want to know what those people were trying to do with those plastic strips,"

an investigating agent

told

The Washington Post

who, like all those quoted by the nation's capital newspaper, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

So far nothing proves, through the images obtained and that continue to be analyzed to the millimeter, that none of the assailants will try to take hostages and the most logical explanation for the FBI is that some of the assailants are people who were or are part of the security forces or the military establishment, which is why they would have carried that material.

Regarding the weapons they carried, federal investigators want to find out if among their plans was to end the life of a congressman, something that the Capitol police officers feared when during the assault they asked politicians to tear off their badges. they identified as senators or congressmen.

New arrests

Meanwhile, new arrests are made every day and charges are filed.

So far, the Department of Justice has charged 13 people with different crimes for the acts committed against the US Congress. To the more than 60 detainees who were after the riots are being added the best-known faces made public through the images of the brutal assault.

Florida police arrested this Saturday the assailant who was carrying with him, while smiling at a camera, the lectern of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

It's about Adam Johnson, 36 years old.

Also already in a cell is Jacob Anthony Chansley (also known as Jake Angeli), from Arizona, and nicknamed

The Shaman of QAnon

, who calls himself the wolf of Yellowstone on his YouTube channel and who entered the Capitol with horns, furs on the head and bare chest.

Chansley, 32, follows the cult of QAnon, considered an insider terror organization by the FBI, and spreading a maddened theory about the existence of a global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who have allegedly infiltrated at the highest levels. of the US Government to end Trump.

The Washington DC Prosecutor's Office also reported the arrest of Republican Derrick Evans, 35, and a member of the West Virginia State Congress, who posted a video on Facebook encouraging the vandals and participating in the assault.

Also in federal custody is another of the most visible and defiant faces of the assault: the man who was photographed with his feet on the table of Pelosi's desk.

Identified as Richard Barnett, from Arkansas, this 60-year-old man had published in the days before the insurrection that he was preparing for "a violent death."

A staunch supporter of Trump and defender of the right to bear arms, Barnett joined the Trumpist voices of electoral fraud and assured in his Facebook account that there was "mountains of evidence" that what happened on November 3 had been a scam.

As arrests take place and charges are filed for trespassing on Capitol Hill, carrying weapons, destroying property, the FBI has in its rearview mirror the group of men who formed a militia who last year were arrested in Michigan on charges of planning the kidnapping of the governor of that state, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, and take hostages.

That case was investigated for months and was stopped in time.

Now the FBI wants to pull a similar thread in Congress.

The biggest threat since 9/11

As the country tries to digest what happened on the 6th, and the five deaths left by the attack, experts warn that violence could be present again before the inauguration day, January 20, when President-elect Joe Biden must be sworn in as president and commander-in-chief of the United States.

"Every day we see how the rhetoric intensifies on social networks of these white supremacists or followers of the extreme right who promote hatred," explained this Saturday the director of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, to CNN.

"We fear that the violence will intensify rather than subside."

In the note in which Twitter explained why it was permanently suspending President Trump's account, the company warned that it had observed plans for future armed protests “on and off Twitter, including another proposed attack on the United States Capitol and the buildings of the State Capitol on January 17 ”.

David Laufman, a senior Justice Department official during the 2001 al Qaeda terrorist attacks, considers the headlines "America's Democracy in Danger" and "The Temple of Freedom Raided by an Alienated Mob" valid.

In his opinion, what happened last Wednesday represents "the greatest threat to our national security since September 11".

Quoted by

The Washington Post

, Laufman goes further and considers the assault even more dangerous because it is internal terrorism, and it puts "our democracy in danger."

For this former federal prosecutor, there should be no higher priority for the FBI and the Department of Justice at this time than to investigate and bring each and every one of those responsible for the attack on the Capitol before a judge.

Laufman warns that whoever incited the attack should not be left out of the investigation, in clear reference to the outgoing president.

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